So most threads are about a particular game and peter out after a few or a dozen posts, including my own.
So I thought it would be nice if there was a spot where you can talk about games in general, what are you currently playing? What's your favorite game you played last year? What game are you excited for? Does your cat sleep on the keyboard? All relevant.
I personally have been playing Assassins Creed Valhalla (for the a viking) and have been getting back into Expedition 33 since they added the free expansion, which is pretty out there, even for Expedition 33 standards.
First off, I'm playing as Tammerine (pre-lich Tammy) a strongheart halfling archery ranger with animal focus. My go to familiar is the cat or spider, my go to animal companion is the wolf or bear (or giant raven).
Feel free to share your own life lessons, I'm currently in part 1.
1) being evil is super easy, barely an inconvenience. But it also means Karlach and I can never be friends... *restarts game*
Long story short, more than a week ago I tried switching to a Starfinder Adventure subscription, then tried getting customer service to switch the current adventure in the pending order to the subscription.
Well they made a mess of things, cancelled the current adventure in my order and spawned not one, but two separate orders for Red Shift Rally and the Kobold King Hardcover, while leaving the current bigger order in limbo.
I've been trying to reach customer service department for EIGHT DAYS and have heard absolutely nothing. I've tried responding to the original email chain, and I've tried starting a new email chain, all to no avail.
Well, you're not getting any more of my money if you're going to ignore me.
Cancel everything.
So far my only recourse is to change the expiration date on my payment method, hopefully that's enough.
Just as the title says, it turns out they have it at the local game store that's conveniently located on my drive home from work. Which is easier for the holiday season.
Thank you, have a great week! Stay warm, it's brutally cold out here on the tundra.
I feel like I'm going to be coming back to this often, with all sorts of questions!
First of all, great job! Looks like a ton of fun!
First question! Can you use your major forms to create armor? Examples in the gear array description only mention weapons and cybernetic augmentations.
B) Do your nanites form all the major and minor forms all at once, or is it as you need the item it's just there.
So I got this game last week but didn't get to play it until Friday, and boy have I been playing it.
But I feel like I should start over and record my findings.
For this playthrough my Biomutant breed is Rex, I went full on intelligence (for the Fievel head) Psi-Freak and I'm going with dark side type of powers but I'm going to side with the ninja hippie tribe instead of the nihilist samurais.
My Biomutant looks like you combined Fievel with Lots A Huggin Bear and gave him PTSD amnesia.
So basically, humanity is wiped out and the world tree is dying and it's up to Captain Lots Of Ammo to save it. Through any means necessary.
So apparently my subs decided they wanted company so they pulled a Dead Reign sourcebook out of a different order and added it to my subs this month, which would normally be fine, but I'd rather get my subs sooner rather than later as the Dead Reign book says it will ship in 16-38 days which is a bit long to wait for a new Starfinder AP.
So, if you could please break up the party and separate the Dead Reign sourcebook that would be great!
I'd do it myself, but I don't want them to think I'm not cool or a narc or anything like that.
Thanks, have a great weekend!
By the way, if you're looking for a zombie apocalypse game Dead Reign is surprisingly fun, I highly recommend it.
Edit: It seems it also shuffled the Graveyard Earth book all by it's lonesome in the sidecar. If you could combine it with the book it tried throwing with my subs into a separate order to ship out when you get them in the warehouse that would be great!
So I don't mind waiting for the order, but I'm curious as to a couple of things.
1. Which product is backordered?
2. Is it actually on backorder or is it the last one you have so the inventory system automatically says it's backordered (our system at Toys R Us would do that, you wouldn't believe how many times I'd have to check the bays or shelves looking for the last fingerling in the store).
3. If it is backordered what's the average turnaround time on that, and further what are the chances your distributer no longer carries the item.
Thanks! I realize that's a lot to throw at you so no hurry!
Have a great weekend!
Also, if your distributer doesn't carry it anymore go ahead and cancel it, no big deal, Palladium Books aren't exactly the trendy thing these days so completely understandable. Thanks again!!
After I placed the order it says pending but then also says it will ship in an unknown amount of time. I don't suppose you can have someone check the inventory, and if possible you can combine it with the also pending Australia book and the England book in my side cart into one dynamic, action packed order.
If it's in stock, otherwise just cancel whatever is not in stock.
I have an assortment of Starfinder stuff in my shopping cart I'd like to have shipped to a fellow forum member, lisamarlene with whatever shipping is cheaper, also if the Paizocon 2020 code is still active could you apply that to the order (as long as it doesn't drop the order below 100).
So, it's finally happened, after three weeks of ninety degrees every day (I work outside) my brain finally snapped and I accidentally titled a thread "Who Will be The Agents of Edgewatch" instead of "Who Are Your Agents of Edgewatch".
I don't suppose someone can fix that, preferably before my brain tries to attack itself for such insolence. Don't worry, I still have three more days working in the heat this week so you have some time.
So I've added a bunch of stuff to my sidecart the last week or so, I don't suppose you'd mind sending it to the warehouse now rather than having an insanely complicated order for next month.
I hope your week is going well, mine is going pretty good so far!
Anyway, I recently ordered Lost Omens Legends and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind switching it to a subscription. I was going to do it myself but it wanted me to start with Gods and Magic, which I already have so I figured you would be the experts on sorting everything out.
Thanks! As always I've been greatly enjoying your books!
P.S. I sent an email regarding a pawn mix-up with the last order but no hurry!
Apparently my wife went all crazy shopping this last weekend and I got a transaction declined message this afternoon. I don't suppose you can reverse that charge or do whatever magic it is that you do and then have it set to ship Friday.
Thank you! Stay healthy and safe!!
Edit: I don't think it technically charged my card it just pinged it so I don't think an actual reversal or whatever is needed but if you could please push it back to Friday that would be awesome!
I don't know if it's a glitch in the system or if it's just an early warning system, but I got an email saying my complimentary SFS PDFs are pending, which is odd because usually PDFs don't do that.
If you don't mind checking to see what's up that would be amazing! No hurry!
Have a great rest of the week!
Edit: Also, I don't know if my sub order is stuck in some sort of weird pending Upside Down or just waiting for it's turn, but if you could double check the status of that order that would also be amazing.
I got my package right on time last week, opened up the deck and unwrapped the plastic on the cards and went through them and discovered card #46 is missing.
So, I guess if you have a spare card #46, or maybe take it out of Cosmo's deck when he's off doing his dastardly deeds or whatever, that would be great.
No hurry, I'm sure the universe won't collapse without it.
I just wanted to confirm that Pathfinder Advantage would continue on the Adventure Path subscription if that is my only Pathfinder sub when the new edition drops, like it has been.
Thanks, have a great week! Hopefully it's stopped raining for the winter!
Don't get me wrong, it's great to finally get some news but I'm afraid the name Age of Ashes doesn't really tell me anything, other than I'll need a respirator mask, and there's apparently a hill chock full of Hellknights.
So, I'm curious if a general plot has been announced and I'm just missing it or if they're doing it to cultivate mystique.
Exactly as it says, no big deal, you don't have to send it manually or anything, i keep an eye on my order history during the shipping window anyway, so i'd seen it completed and there isn't a tracking number to keep track of. I just thought you'd like to know!
Thanks!
Have a great (and hopefully snow free) rest of your week!
I just wanted to pass along my thanks for you being you!
Your customer service is always helpful and prompt.
Your warehouse always gets it done promptly, no matter how confusing my order.
I've enjoyed everything I've gotten from you and your products have greatly enhanced both my life and my family's too!
Your artists, writers, and cartographers have always been incredibly talented, very approachable, and thoughtful.
Your editors, designers, and developers have always been willing to listen, open to change, and eager to try new things (as well as talented and all that).
Your management team is always willing to take risks and also eager to try new things and have always been incredibly helpful, forthright, and transparent.
Thank you for your web team and message boards, I've made a lot of good friends, learned a lot about myself, both good and bad, and even learned how to write by using your message boards.
So, thank you! For everything!
Now, some community members will disagree with me on some things, and perhaps it sounds a bit gushy and perhaps I could've phrased it betterer, and I totally understand and accept that, it's just my own experience.
Thank you so much for suspending my subs, if you wouldn't mind shifting everything that's been building up to a side cart so it'll ship with the next round of subs that would be amazing!
Everyone loves a good space opera! Too bad I can't sing!
However, I have seen a lot of Star Wars and Star Trek spoofs and I happened to find Mass Effect Andromeda Deluxe Edition on sale for super cheap so I thought why not!
Full disclosure, I've never played Mass Effect before.
In this case, wouldn't the correct solution be to just rule that using a staff requires you to hold it in one hand? If players want to make it a gauntlet, then all power to them! They just can't actually use it as a staff unless it's actually a staff.
Hmm... you could go Bard with Swashbuckler archetype, Swashbuckler with Bard archetype, or dual-class variant rules to combine the two, if you're trying to make a dervish dancer. PF2 doesn't really do gishes, so it'll probably take a bit of work to make it feel just right, and it might end up a bit overpowered for the system. (The three-actions-per-turn cap will rein things in, but being able to choose between bardic spells and martial damage output is pretty potent.)
Good post, Omega Metroid. I'm still not convinced that Avoid Notice should necessarily be rolled in secret though.
Thank you, Ravingdork, I'm glad it helped.
As for the first roll being secret, there's nothing that actually requires it to be a secret roll, but there is reason to believe that it probably should be. Mainly in how the activity is tied to the Sneak action, which does want a secret roll.
First, if you enter an encounter while Avoiding Notice, your initiative Stealth check is essentially a public Sneak check with a different name; this hints at a connection, but doesn't say anything about publicity vs. secrecy in & of itself. Stealth feats are interesting, though:
• Terrain Stalker applies a benefit to Sneak, and also to Avoid Notice. This implies that the two are considered to be counterparts of each other, for encounter & exploration mode respectively.
• If following a specific target with Avoid Notice, Shadow Mark gives the target a penalty to their Perception DC for detecting you. When stating that the bonus also applies to their initiative & Perception DC if you enter encounter mode, it repeats the base activity's phrase "as normal for Sneak", strengthening the connection between the two.
• Foil Senses applies to Avoid Notice, Hide, and Sneak, suggesting a connection between the three.
• Legendary Sneak lets you Hide & Sneak whenever you want, with or without cover/concealment, and also lets you Avoid Notice whenever you want, with or without the Avoid Notice activity. This suggests a correlation. If we assume that the first sentence belies developer intent, the Avoid Notice benefit is caused by the Sneak benefit, with the assumption that your character gets free Avoid Notice because all of their movement is Sneak.
It's also notable that legacy Avoid Notice directly mentions Swift Sneak and Legendary Sneak, and explicitly applies Swift Sneak's Sneak benefit to Avoid Notice, suggesting that Avoid Notice is intended to be the exploration version of spending one action per turn on Sneak. It's also interesting to note that the Investigate and Search activities mention secret checks, but don't have the Secret trait; we can infer from this that exploration activities don't need to have the Secret trait to want secret rolls, but we can also infer that if they want a secret roll, they'll ask for it in the activity's description.
Now, all of this provides interesting data, and does suggest that there's reason to keep it secret, but we haven't seen anything that answers the question directly...
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There is one other place we can look, though: The rules for running exploration mode. In the legacy version, it was pretty explicit: The CRB chapter essentially tells us that Avoid Notice is just shorthand for using Sneak ten times a minute, and the GMG expansion confirms that exploration activities are typically based on using one action per turn. The GM Core version confirms that exploration activities are still based on taking one action per turn, and it does still hint that Avoid Notice is the "one Sneak per turn" activity, but the remastered version is unfortunately less explicit than the legacy version here.
And that, in turn, is why we tend to assume the first roll is secret. It's not explicitly required to be secret, you're right about that. But Avoid Notice is essentially ten Sneaks per minute, and Sneak is secret, so most people treat Avoid Notice's first roll as secret for consistency. You don't actually HAVE to make it a secret check if you don't want to, though, just keep in mind that letting your players see the result might convey information you don't want them to have yet, and might spoil a surprise or two for them. (In particular, if they know they rolled low, it's a lot harder to have competent NPCs pretend to not see them, and players might find it harder to believably fall for the trap and/or might unconsciously change the way they RP.) If your group is good at keeping meta information out of their roleplay, making it public can lead to fun times roleplaying the failure, and provide characterisation that success doesn't normally provide (e.g., did they get sloppy because they're too overconfident, did they make critical failures because they lack confidence, did they just trip over something like a banana peel and make too much noice, or was it something else entirely?). But if they're prone to metagaming even when they don't want to, or if they like letting things play out organically and don't want to know the result before their characters know, then they'll probably prefer you keep it secret.
Best to just go with whatever your table enjoys more, IMO; just keep in mind that the average player or GM will probably assume it's secret even if it doesn't say so.
Hmm... looking at it, I can see a few reasons for two rolls. (Note that this post will assume that after using Avoid Notice, you use Stealth if you roll initiative. All of the second roll's potential benefits are lost if you choose to roll Perception for initiative.)
1) The first roll is assumed (but technically not stated) to be a secret roll. Initiative, however, is not. If you use the initial roll as your initiative, then the GM is required to reveal the roll, thus breaking secrecy. The second roll thus exists to preserve the first roll's secrecy.
2) It's possible for effects to modify an Avoid Notice roll but not an initiative roll, and vice versa. (And, if we assume that Avoid Notice is a shorthand for subordinate Sneaks, it's also possible for effects to modify a Sneak roll but not an initiative roll, and vice versa.) Keeping the two rolls distinct makes it easier to properly apply effects.
3) The first roll is made when entering exploration mode, and the second roll is made when entering encounter mode. They take place during different modes of play, and are assumed to not carry over from one mode to the other.
4) Players aren't actually required to know whether they're being observed while being sneaky, funnily enough. The first roll thus allows the GM to maintain the illusion of opposition, regardless of whether the party is actually opposed or not. If you were only required to roll at the start of Avoid Notice if you're actually being observed, then Avoid Notice would actually be a magical omniscient radar that lets you know whether anyone in the known universe is looking at you or not. ...Meanwhile, if an encounter starts, you now know that you're being observed, and thus get a second public roll so you know whether you're still hidden or not when combat begins.
5) Funnily enough, the initiative roll actually provides a last-minute chance to mitigate the first roll's failure. If the first roll fails, then any opposition has reason to believe you're there, but can't actually prove it. If you then go into encounter mode, a sufficiently high initiative roll allows you to remain hidden when entering combat, either leaving your opponents easy pickings, or forcing them to waste actions searching for you. You also have an opportunity to stealthily exit combat, if you so desire. (More succinctly, the first roll determines whether you trigger an encounter. If an encounter is triggered, the second roll determines whether you enter combat undetected, hidden, or observed. If you only make one roll, it becomes impossible to enter combat undetected, because any result high enough to remain undetected is high enough to avoid combat in the first place.)
6) Logically speaking, the change of conditions might lead to changes in how you try to hide. If you hear someone shouting that they've discovered your friends, you might panic and make a mistake that outs you. Or conversely, you might take extra precautions to make sure they don't find you, too. Having a distinct initiative roll provides a way to model this.
7) And most importantly... combat is optional. If you try to Avoid Notice, you might end up getting in a fight, and you might not. If you don't, there won't be a second roll, because initiative is never needed. If you do, there will be a second roll, both to determine your starting initiative and whether your now-spooked opponents see you at the last possible second.
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It's important to remember that being discovered doesn't necessarily mean the first roll was low. It's entire possible that your party of four rogues got natural 20s on your Avoid Notice checks, but your quarry is as crazy prepared as Batman, and the only way to reach them is a chokepoint with detection magic or infrared sensors; the party's quarry knows you're there, but you're still sneaky enough that they don't know where you are, why you're there, or where you're headed. If you're just passing through and don't want to fight, or you're just there to observe your quarry and report back to base, then you can do so with no problem whatsoever; there's no second roll, because you never start an encounter and never need to roll initiative. If you're there to capture or kill them, then you're doing so on their terms, since they have the home field advantage; everyone involved makes a public initiative roll, and may or may not give your location away based on this public roll.
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It's also important to remember that different encounters might have different DCs. Suppose you're trying to infiltrate a mage's tower, with a security booth at the only entrance, cleaning staff on various floors, and the mage's apprentices & students halfway up. You decide to Avoid Notice, and get a nat 20 on your secret roll; let's say you're Lv.7, and have a total result of 37 (master Stealth, +4 Dex, no items). The security guard's Perception DC is 35, the maids are 14 because they're not paid enough to care, the students are anywhere from 3 to 33 depending on how occupied they are with experiments & studying, and the mage himself is DC 40. Thanks to Avoid Notice, you skip at least three potential encounters, and get to fight the mage with full resources and no minions; it'll take multiple turns for any of the mage's allies to arrive, giving you an opportunity to win and leave before anyone else shows up. Possibly even without anyone knowing you were here! Everyone now rolls initiative; the mage is about to sound the alarm, and you're about to strike. Depending on the results, this can go four ways:
1) The mage can go first but you beat his Perception DC, so he knows you're there but not where you are (letting him sound the alarm, and letting you get in a sneak attack).
2) The mage can go first and you fail his Perception DC, letting him sound the alarm and also target you with a spell.
3) You go first but fail his Perception DC, meaning you can stop him from setting off the alarm, but he's not off-guard and might be able to disable you with a reaction.
4) You go first and beat his Perception DC, leaving a spooked mage watching every shadow in terror, easy pickings for you to drop on from the ceiling; you can stop him from sounding the alarm, and he can't do a thing to stop you.
In this example, we see that the first roll allowed you to skip most of the dungeon and go straight to the end, while the second roll both gives you an opportunity to recover when the first roll eventually does fail, and also determines the severity of the first roll's failure.
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Now, that said, if you want to flatten it into a single roll, and have the initial roll pull double duty as any necessary initiative rolls, that's probably fine too. It can be a good way to save a tiny bit of time, even, if your group tends to sneak around a lot. You'll just want to keep a few things in mind:
1) The initial roll will only be truly secret if you never enter encounter mode. If you go into combat, the results will be revealed; either you have to tell everyone their rolls upfront so they know their initiative order, or you can tell players when it's their turn and which (if any) enemies have noticed them, allowing them to get a rough estimate of their rolls. Or, if you want to save time, you can just have them roll publicly, but act as if they think they passed; this can lead to fun roleplay opportunities, and let anyone who fails poke fun at how their character failed (stepped on a few too many branches, maybe, or accidentally tripped over a garbage bag in the dark alley).
2) Even though you're only rolling the dice once, there are still two distinct "rolls" for mechanical purposes. Remember to apply modifiers appropriately, and that the second "roll" still triggers any actions that rolling initiative normally would! (For instance, if your base Stealth check is 25, you have a +3 bonus to Avoid Notice, and a -1 penalty to initiative checks, make sure to remember that your roll is 28 in exploration mode and 24 in encounter mode! And if you're, e.g., a Monk with Reflexive Stance, you still get your free Stance action when combat starts!)
3) Using only a single roll means there's no last-second recovery chance. If you fail to beat their Perception DC while Avoiding Notice, you'll also fail to beat it when "rolling initiative", since you still have the same roll and they still have the same DC. This makes it impossible to enter combat undetected; depending on your one and only roll, you will always be either hidden or observed upon entering encounter mode. (This is a big one, your party's Rogues might feel unfairly punished unless you give them a second roll to try to enter combat undetected. At which point you're just making two rolls anyways. Make sure to discuss it with the party first; make sure they understand the repercussions of removing the second roll, and that they're still onboard with it, because it's more likely to harm them than it is to help them.)
The chassis is strong, but the subclass is intended to be a pure negative. If you lean into the spellcasting and ignore your curse, you'll be powerful. If you build your defenses up alongside what the base class gives you, you'll be very hard to take down. If you use Divine Access well, you'll be flexible. If you choose curses that don't harm you more than they help you (e.g., Cosmos & Flames), you can spam very potent Cursebound feats without problem.
But on the flip side, if you try to lean into what your mystery is supposed to specialise in, you'll usually be disappointed. Ancestors is a trap option (and the feat that replicates the legacy curse is, mathematically speaking, always harmful to use), Battle doesn't help you melee (and requires at least two feats (either archetype or general feats, IIRC) to regain legacy Battle's defenses), Bones is ambiguous and needs cleanup (as written, it either renders you effectively unhealable or does literally nothing, since it makes you vulnerable to but not targetable by vitality damage), Life is explicitly the worst subclass at using life link (and, weirdly enough, explicitly had its lore rewritten to be less enjoyable), Tempest gives you access to a domain spell that's incompatible with your curse, and so on. Meanwhile, Cosmos does basically nothing, Flames is hilariously ignorable, Lore is pretty much only a problem if you let it hit Cursebound 4, and so on.
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Generally, if you lean into being a tanky spellbot, you'll love it, and find that it performs that role very well. And if you minmax your curse, you won't feel the intended downside of using the powerful Cursebound class feats you'll have access to. But if you actually wanted to lean into a specific Mystery, you're probably going to end up being disappointed.
In particular for imprisonment... making it mythic really helps to create narratives about ancient evils being locked away that not just anyone can let out.
This is a reasonable aim. But for this a paragraph (or a line) in the sense that rituals can have mythic versions and to implement or reverse those you must have mythic means (mythic group, help or items) should be enough, I think. So for every ancient evil you don't want to allow be freed by just any powerful entity you say it has been entrapped by a mythic version of some normal ritual.
Or we (or you, if you're the one creating the adventure) can just create something new.
In 2nd edition, only the PCs are bound by the rules for PCs. The GM gets to build things differently, using the guidelines for creating items and hazards and monsters and all that in the GM Core as a starting place.
I'm a bit late, and it's probably been said already, but this sort of view just ends up creating an "every adventurer in the entire world is able to do this with no restriction, except you specifically" sort of situation. It's not just that they're mythic rituals, it's that they're mythic rituals for PCs only, while literally every other caster can use them with or without mythic rules. That makes it come across less as the rituals suddenly being too powerful (which they kinda aren't), and more like you're taking away the players' scissors and replacing them with rounded kiddy scissors because you don't trust them not to hurt themselves.
If they were mythic for everyone, PC and NPC alike, then the "gating pre-existing content behind new rules" issue would still be there, but it probably wouldn't sit anywhere near as poorly with the community. But responding to questions by clarifying that it's mythic for PCs, but NPCs don't actually have to follow the rules because the GM can do whatever they want, makes it clear that this change is meant specifically to nerf PCs, which really isn't the sort of impression you want to give.
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Personally, what I would suggest is making a set of "lesser" rituals, as part of mythic rules specifically. When mythic rules are in use, the lesser versions can be accessed by anyone (in the same way that the originals used to be), while the original versions (now "greater" versions) explicitly require an expenditure of mythic power to use. When mythic rules aren't in use, then the rituals work as normal (in their original, pre-mythic form, with no "lesser" or "greater" versions), and aren't locked behind mythic rules. This feels like the ideal compromise between your vision and player/GM feedback, really.
Not so much reaching, as noticing that there are a ton of flaws, especially of the sort that would be caught in actual playtesting. For just a few of the ones I've noticed so far...
• The spell text issue here. It's clear that they get to add one spell to their repertoire for each slot, and the PFS ruling (made with Paizo's guidance) shos that this is the intent. But on the flip side, it not receiving day 0 errata when significantly less major issues have in the past is baffling for Paizo.
• The changes to Mystery & Curse mechanics, where the Mystery now has no actual benefits or unique class feats attached to it, and just serves as a vehicle for the Curse, is the opposite of how literally every other class in the game is designed. Most classes get a choice of subclass (or pseudo-subclass feat chains) to choose how they want to specialise, and reward their chosen playstyle; Oracles choose how they want to suffer, and are penalised in their chosen playstyle (unless they're Cosmos or Flames). They're the only class in the game that chooses what they want to be worst at instead of what they want to be best at, which doesn't even seem to be intentional on Paizo's part. (It's also weird since their stated plan was to remove Curse benefits, not Mystery benefits. Doing the latter suggests that the Mystery is treated as a rider on the Curse design-wise, instead of as their subclass choice that it's presented as. This, too, is curious.)
• Multiple Curses have flaws that would've been caught during playtesting, yet clearly made it through. Notable standouts include the Tempest Curse being given access to a domain spell they explicitly cannot use (bottle the storm, which is non-functional because its effect hinges on mitigating their curse), the Meddling Futures feat intended to replicate the old Ancestors Curse being both mathematically incompatible with Ancestors Oracles and more poorly designed than the original (the lack of heavy armour locks them into Dex, and the status bonuses are weaker than your Cursebound-level-based Enfeebled, so it can only break even at best; the addition of a movement-based ancestor with no Step option both means that using it up close puts you at risk of being forced to eat an AoO, that likely crits thanks to Enfeebled, and also changes the odds of getting a favourable ancestor from 50% to 25%), the Life Curse presents itself as having the same playstyle as the old but removes all of the survivability it relies on (losing your 10 base HP and having your heal spells go from supercharged to anemic makes life link suicidal, rendering the Curse's defining focus spell too much of a liability to use), the Battle Curse is bafflingly undercooked, and the Bones Curse contains another case of ambiguous wording that is either non-functional or makes you essentially immune to heal (you're vulnerable to vitality damage even though you're not undead, but it doesn't say you can be targeted by vitality damage (which normally cannot target living creatures even if they're somehow vulnerable to it); either the vulnerability is meant to make you a valid target (in which case heal both heals and harms you simultaneously; this seems to be the intent, but it has bizarre interactions with healing magic), or that part of the curse does literally nothing to you). I haven't done a full analysis, but even a cursory examination reveals more typoes and mistakes in the Mysteries & Curses than in any other PC2 class.
• As multiple people have pointed out, a Sorcerer with an Oracle Dedication is a better Oracle than the class itself, similar to the old "Rogue with Monk Dedication is the best Monk" issue. This comes across as weirdly mistuned.
• The class also has the overarching conceptual flaw that, thanks to the Curse being purely negative now, you're actually disincentivised from interacting with it. The old Oracle used riders on its curses to give you reasons to engage; they were overall negative, but the minor curse being negative and the moderate one adding a small positive incentivised you to push it to moderate when you could. The new Oracle just ramps up the penalty as you increase Cursebound, by extention making [Cursebound] feats positive for one turn and then negative for the rest of the encounter, encouraging an "interact with your class features as an absolute last resort if you have no other options" mindset that rewards playing as a pseudo-Sorcerer and punishes playing as an actual Oracle. Like the "Oracle uses its subclass to decide what you want to be worst at" issue, this is something no other class in the game does, which makes it stand out. (They even changed the flavour to be more negative and less enjoyable, removing even that potential reason to interact; the Life Curse is a notable standout, for going from "you're a fountain of life energy, and the more you use the more it tries to burst out of you" to "you're burning up your own life energy, and shrivel up & die inside more the more you use it".)
If it was just the spell issue, then it would be a reach, for sure. But the fact that this is just one of many similar problems, and hasn't received errata despite being a known and acknowledged problem (since the PFS team discusses their rulings with the dev team), suggests that it's just a symptom of a much deeper issue. I don't like harping at it so much, but the sheer number of Remastered Oracle problems that have been pointed out (and argued about) here and around the standard TTRPG Internet haunts paint a pretty telling picture. >.<
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That said, it is clear that they get one spell known for every slot, since this is a core mechanical rule that's reinforced by the table, and since the example text contains other mistakes as well. Easiest thing to do is just say that the class tables are correct, and then you won't have egg on your face once the errata eventually drops. (Assuming that it does.)
Indeed. It's certainly within the realms of possibility, especially with the understanding that most writers aren't biologists. The standard sci-fi/fantasy-family writer tends to assume all humanoids are compatible regardless of species, since they either don't understand the genetic implications or don't let them get in the way of worldbuilding; at best, the work might acknowledge that inter-species fertility is not at all the norm, and either provide an issue or make it an explicit in-universe anomaly that scientists are trying to figure out. (Such as, e.g., Star Trek: TNG eventually did, where the answer was that most if not all humanoids are offshoots of a common ancestor, seeded by a near-godlike precursor species; essentially "evolution by intelligent design".)
That said, in the Pathfinder universe's case specifically, where it's a known and proven fact that creator deities exist, you can literally download a soul (if you're an android), the same species (or exactly identical species) can be found on multiple planets in multiple galaxies, and the line between mortal & deity is basically just a really strong suggestion, I would personally assume that we are dealing with multiple distinct species with varying levels of shared genetic code, and the differences are smoothed over with the same background divine magic that most Oracles rely on.
At the very least, we know that something funny is going on, considering that humans are known to be genetically compatible with lizards that may or may not pretend to be human (Dragonbloods, descended from dragon ancestors), giant alien fairies from another universe (Half-Elves, assuming at least lip service to original Germanic elf lore, and that the elves' ancestors were from the First World), literal angels from Heaven & demons from Hell (Nephilim in general, Aasimar & Tieflings specifically), embodiments of pure elemental energy (planar scions in general; Ifrits are especially notable, since their elemental ancestor may or may not have been literally made of living fire), and so on. Considering that some of these don't even have any form of genetic material, and some are from different planes of existence...
If you think the cross-compatibility issues are weird, just remember that a bipedal cat can have an anime catgirl as a fraternal twin, without inter-species relations. Probably best to assume the land is so imbued with magical energies that all life in Golarion literally has magic written into its very DNA, with all the problems that solves & creates. So, compatibility issues are nothing, when their genetic code can just cast a spell on itself to smooth it over.
Sorry for the delays responding, but... yeah. The Oracle still has issues. xD I'd like to have kept some form of mystery benefit, myself, even if you were forced to pay a feat tax for the basic functionality; I'd prefer it without the feat tax, of course, but I hear premaster basic functionality replication feats are part of the CUP, not the ORC, so they're covered by the Infinite license ;3 they'd probably have made it a tax so they could genericise them.
That said, I really wouldn't have wanted to see Life's extra 2/level HP be turned into something like "Your Hit Points increase by 9 for every level, instead of 8. If you are cursebound 3, they instead increase by 10 for every level, instead of 8." And I wouldn't have wanted to see Ancestors' extra ancestry feats get nerfed into "You gain the benefits of a Lv.1 ancestry feat if you're Lv.20 and cursebound 4. We choose which one, apply now and wait 6-8 business days for our decision." (I'm not even sure if I'm joking or not, the first one seems in line with how they nerfed the other stuff they carried over.)
Baarogue wrote:
yarrchives wrote:
Someone upthread said something about only two of the remastered mysteries having been playtested. What were the two, and where can I read that myself? So much about this book keeps making me think it got rushed, not just in the oracle (but definitely especially in the oracle) but other extra text that showed the care for clarity that went into the APG is just missing from PC2
There's no official confirmation, as far as I can tell, but it was a pretty common initial impression when PC2 came out. The class came across as them playtesting Cosmos & Flames, finding them satisfactory, and then just making everything else "similar" to them without actually testing anything. Notable standouts that support this are the Ancestors Curse being outright suicidal (and the feat that apes the premaster curse being mathematically incompatible with Ancestors Oracles)¹, the Battle Curse forcing no less than two feat taxes to restore the premaster form's basic functionality², the Bones Curse having a major ambiguity that either renders them unhealable or lets you ignore half the curse⁴, and the Tempest Curse being given a domain spell that explicitly does not work while Cursebound³. And, of course, the well-known spells goof, where one part of the class description says they get three spells per level, but another says four; it's been confirmed to be 4, but the error even being there reeks of "too rushed for proofreading." (The consensus still seems to be that Oracle suffers from not being playtested, though some people might be opening up a tiny bit to some of the other Curses. Most of them are poorly designed, though.)
Footnote 1: Ancestors:
1: Ancestors Curse makes you clumsy while Cursebound, on a class that only has light armour proficiency (and is thus expected to use Dex for AC and [Finesse] weapons if they Strike); anything that increases your Cursebound status thus makes enemy attacks more likely to hit and more likely to crit, and also makes you more likely to fail Ref saves. ...Your initial revelation spell is touch range. Needless to say, trying to engage with your Curse features is more likely to kill you the higher your Cursebound status, which is a weirdly common problem with PF2R Oracles.
Additionally, the class feat intended to replicate the original curse, Meddling Futures, provides a bonus that scales at roughly half the speed your curse does (or not at all, for the Strike ancestor's bonus), but with a catch: While the original version applied to your next turn and had a 50% chance of landing your desired result, this one applies to your next action and only has a 25% chance of getting the right roll. If you got a bad roll on the original, you had time to think about it, and plan out a move while everyone else is taking their turns; if you get a bad roll here, you're forced to figure it out or waste an action right then & there, very possibly slowing the entire game down. That said, let's look at each option and how it's flawed:
* Rolling the "Warrior" (Strike) option actually decreases your chance of landing a hit. Specifically, it ups the damage if you hit, but gives a flat +1 to the attack roll, while also increasing Cursebound... which, since you're using a [Finesse] weapon, gives you an accuracy penalty thanks to Clumsy. End result is that it breaks even if you're not Cursebound, but you fall furthur behind the more Cursebound you are.
* Rolling the "Adept" (skill) option is all right if you're using Perception or a mental skill, or if you're at a distance from the enemies. But if you're using a Dex skill (which you're somewhat incentivised to do, since you're a Dex AC build), it does not. (And if you're beside an enemy, then even if you were running a Str build and wanted to land a maneuver, you wouldn't want to risk rolling because the enemy's retaliatory attacks next turn will just crit you anyways.) You get +1 to the Perception or skill check, or +2 if you're Cursebound 3 specifically, for the cost of decreasing effective Dex by -1!
* Rolling the "Sage" (spell) option is the only actually-good result here. Your spells run off Cha, so the bonus isn't countered by the curse. The only downsides are that it makes you more likely to eat crits after, and that you only have a 25% chance of rolling it.
* Rolling the "Wanderer" (speed) option forces you to move, making you take a Stride, Burrow, Climb, or Fly action with a speed bonus. Unfortunately, there are two big problems with it. The most noticeable, as hinted at above, is that it replaces the premaster curse's "free" option; this makes the entire feat significantly worse, since you now have a 25% chance of getting your desired result (instead of the original 50% chance). The second, more subtle flaw, however, is that the list of movement options notably doesn't include Step, which is the only movement option you'd want to be forced to take if you were hoping for the Warrior or Adept result instead. The end result is that adding this option changes the original's "choose your preferred ancestor" option into an "eat crit AoO and die" option, that seems almost tailor-made to either kill you or ruin your turn.
[Also, there's a major, but easy to gloss over typo in the Adept ancestor: You get +2 if you're Cursebound 3. Not if you're "at least Cursebound 3", like the other three options say; the Adept one omits the "at least", so it stands out. As written, you only get +1 if you're Cursebound 4. Most groups will treat it as saying "at least", but the sloppiness is, shall we say, a bad omen.]
Footnote 2: Battle:
2: The new curse technically increases their AC cap, but the removal of medium/heavy armour prof forces a feat tax if you want to actually take advantage of it; with the changes to the Champion archetype, you have to spend a minimum of two class and/or general feats to regain your armour proficiency.
Similarly, the sheer incompetence of their initial focus spell effectively forces a feat tax if you want martial weapons, requiring you to spend an ancestry, class, or general feat to regain functional proficiency; this, unfortunately, renders the focus spell redundant, meaning that the Battle Oracle effectively has no initial revelation spell.
Footnote 3: Bones:
3: Bones Curse makes you weak to both vitality & void damage, suppresses any immunities & resistances you might otherwise have, and also makes it possible for both to damage you even if they normally wouldn't affect you, but it doesn't explicitly make vitality damage effects treat you as undead. (The lore treats you as somewhere between living & undead, but doesn't have any actual mechanical backing behind it.) This creates a MAJOR ruling question: Does "even if one or the other normally has no effect on you" allow undead-targeting vitality damage to target you as if you were undead, or not? If it does, then heal now damages you (since it damages undead), and may or may not heal you at the same time (since you're not actually undead). If it doesn't, then the vitality weakness is effectively wasted page space, since little to nothing does vitality damage to living creatures. Either way, no one can agree on which is correct, which is meant to be correct, and whether RAW supports or contradicts RAI. Going solely by the side conversation taking up about a sixth of this thread alone, this is absolutely something that would've been caught immediately if the Curse had actually been playtested.
Personally, my interpretation of it is that you can take vitality damage as if undead when a spell would deal vitality damage to undead, but those spells can't actually TARGET you to do damage, thus rendering the point moot. (E.g., heal's vitality damage would absolutely wreck your s***, but it misses because you're not a valid target, so you just get the healing. As far as the judge is concerned, you're guilty, but you get off on a technicality.)
Footnote 4: Tempest:
4: The Tempest Curse has been given the lightning domain, and by extension the domain spells charged javelin and bottle the storm. The first is functional, though a bit ambiguous; remember that spell attack rolls and ranged attack rolls are not the same thing! The second, however... not so much.
Bottle the storm functions by giving lightning resistance, and then absorbing the damage the resistance blocks to let you throw it back at an enemy, but the Tempest Curse gives you a weakness to lightning while active. And since you can't mitigate your curse, you can't gain lightning resistance, thus rendering the spell non-functional while Cursebound.
(It might also be worth mentioning that Tempest, along with Flames, seem to have been designed by a monkey's paw: Before the remaster, they wished for more spells that interact with their mystery features, an area they were sorely lacking in (since the mysteries were balanced around the assumption that they'd take Divine Access at Lv.1, even though it's an optional Lv.4 feat). The remastered versions got the spells they wanted, all right, but lost the features that the spells interacted with in exchange. I'm not sure if this is actually relevant, though, since I can't tell if it was a lack of playtesting, or just intentional spite.)
thenobledrake wrote:
Captain Morgan wrote:
...but like a third of the curses are so bad you'll rarely want to risk them.
This is exactly where people insisting former oracle was "better" lose me.
All of the new curses are far easier to tolerate in practical campaign scenarios than the former curses are, but there's some kind of mental block making it so that where new curses can be bad because they're hard to deal with old curses are good because they're hard to deal with and that doesn't register as nonsense.
Turning the whole discussion into a kind of No True Scottsman because anybody that had a problem with old oracle's mechanical implementation, and apparently also anyone that thinks the new oracle actually does have the same lore despite mechanical differences, isn't a real oracle fan.
The big difference is that the original Oracle's curses had both upsides and downsides, but the remastered version's are purely negative. This applies both to the mechanics, and to the fluff.
The original was designed so that engaging with your curse meant changing your playstyle, which made the class interesting and flexible; you were incentivised to engage despite the negatives, because it had a silver lining and a ton of flavour potential. Being unable to reduce the curse below minor also meant you were intended to spend most of the day with it active, which furthur encouraged you to push it harder so the benefits would kick in, too. It may not have been the ideal way to get you to interact with the feature, but the way it was designed did mean that you would end up engaging with it and the new playstyle if you picked the class. (Notable standouts include Life making you a superhealer that empathically siphoned harm away from their allies, Lore potentially being able to circumvent combats entirely if you used the knowledge well, and Ancestors being Ancestors.)
The new version, however... not so much. Each curse is now a strict downside with no benefits, and Cursebound feats only provide a fleeting benefit that'll last a turn or two at most. The curses hamper your "intended" gameplay while active (e.g., the Life Oracle is still designed to take damage for your allies, but has lost the higher HP and potent self-healing that makes it viable; you just end up taking more damage than your chassis can support), and in some cases run a very high risk of killing you outright (i.e., Ancestors, by turning you into a crit magnet). And importantly, you're no longer incentivised to aggravate them; bonuses tend to scale half as quickly as the curse, if at all, so increasing Cursebound is purely detrimental. (There isn't even a flavour reason to engage, since the flavour is anemic at best; the Curse tend to run contrary to the Mystery's flavour, with no silver linings. Case in point, the Life Oracle's flavour was originally that they're essentially an overflowing font of life force, and the curse represents how much is bursting out of them; the new Life Oracle's flavour, conversely, is that they're spending their own life force to heal people, and the curse represents how dead they are inside from spending their own life energy.) The end result is that while the original's curses gave you a bonus for engaging with them, and also had fun flavour potential to offset the mechanical penalties, the new curses have neither; they both make you perform worse, and are written to make playing your character feel worse, the more you engage your curse.
So, it seems weird, but there's a subtle but big reason: The old curses just felt better to engage with, since you got token benefits and neat flavour out of them, while the new curses just feel bad to engage with because the more you engage them, the harder they screw both you and your flavour.
thenobledrake wrote:
SuperBidi wrote:
Old curses were having strong impact but were coming with strong bonuses.
That's the problem, though.
The bonuses you were supposed to want came alongside the penalties that prevented the class from actually being functional - without the whole of the campaign being skewed to account for it, at least.
Meanwhile, the new Tempest curse imposes a -10 penalty to all of your speed at Cursebound 4, literally slowing your entire party down if they don't want to leave you behind. Might just be me, but that sounds like it skews the campaign to account for it a lot more than any of the old curses did.
If Escape needed a free hand, it would say it needed a free hand; Gortle is trying to add pseudo-rules text that isn't actually there, that's all. You don't need a free hand to stomp on someone's foot while they've got you in a bear hug, you don't need a free hand to try to break free of the ice freezing you in place up to the neck, and you don't need a free hand to try to untie the ropes tying you up with your teeth. (Grabbed, immobilised, and restrained, respectively.) In two of these three situations, you don't even have a free hand to work with, using "free hand" as a standard English expression instead of a mechanical term.
Put simply, it's irrational to expect the action of freeing yourself to require you to have your hands free before you can use it. ;P
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Now, that said, the Multiple Attacks with Athletics section is a bit ambiguous. The section, as written, assumes that [Attack] actions require a free hand, though the [Attack] trait itself doesn't actually require this. The gist of the section is "these actions require a free hand, so you use your fist attack's traits to determine MAP", which can be generalised to "[Attack] actions that require a free hand use Fist's traits for MAP". And importantly, every Athletics [Attack] action which requires a free hand explicitly states this as a requirement, while Escape notably does not.
Overall, upon reading it, I would say that "all Athletics [Attack] actions require a free hand, even if not explicitly stated" is an incorrect reading, if an easy one to make; the sidebar is poorly written, IMO. The biggest point against it is Force Open: Force Open is the only [Attack] action in the Athletics section that doesn't list a free hand requirement, and funnily enough, would not actually function as written if it did require a free hand. (On the grounds that Force Open has a -2 penalty if you're prying and aren't using a crowbar, and a crowbar requires two hands. If "all Athletics [Attack] actions require a free hand", then Force Open cannot ever be used with a crowbar, and thus all attempts to pry an object open would have a -2 item penalty.)
So, to sum it up: Force Open is undeniable evidence that Athletics [Attack] actions only require a free hand if they have an explicit free hand requirement, because you cannot wield a crowbar and have a free hand at the same time, and Force Open wants a crowbar. Therefore, the sidebar cannot be saying that all Athletics [Attack]s require a free hand, or it would be factually incorrect. And thus, the only interpretation is that the sidebar is saying "use the Fist attack's traits if you're using a free hand, use the weapon's traits if you're using a weapon, or ask the GM if you aren't sure (or aren't using either)".
Honestly, the sidebar is just really poorly written in general. Heck, as written, the "Some characters can get unarmed attacks without the agile trait as well." sentence is completely irrelevant, since free hand Athletics [Attack]s specifically use Fist even if you have other unarmed attacks. It needs another pass by the editor, IMO.
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Now, all that said, I would personally rule that Escape is likely intended to apply full MAP, taking Slippery Prey into consideration. Or at least, apply full MAP when using Athletics or Acrobatics; it's telling that the feat doesn't reduce MAP as if agile when using unarmed attack stats, which suggests that the writers assumed "unarmed attack mod Escape" is inherently [Agile] because unarmed attacks default to [Agile]. This, in turn, means that Slippery Prey is basically just a stand-in for weapon traits like [Trip] or [Shove], to let you [Agile]-ify your Escape without needing a free hand in the same way as those traits do. And by extension, my verdict on the matter...
...Is that Escape probably wants to be [Agile] when using your unarmed attack mod, but really needs to be errata'd to clarify this. It's in a weird place where it's [Agile] if you use your attack bonus, but not if you make a skill check. And that just ain't right.
Just to throw my two cents in here... I haven't done a full comparison yet, but the thing that stands out the most to me isn't just the loss of Mystery benefits (and by extension, the effective loss of your Mystery as a whole, since there aren't really any class feats that key off of it), but the whole "choose your Mystery, and by 'Mystery' we mean Curse" thing means that Oracle's subclasses are anathema to the game's standard subclass design.
Normally, if a class has a subclass, then you use that subclass to specialise. It lets you choose what you're best at, and how you want to narrow your focus & define your character. Oracle, however, chooses how they want to get screwed over.
They're the only class in the game that uses their subclass to choose what they want to be worst at.
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Quick summary:
• Ancestors doesn't get worse at having ancestors, but they're now significantly worse at not becoming an ancestral spirit (by which I mean dying because their ancestors are actively malicious and explicitly trying to kill you now).
• Battle is effectively a trap action to trick you into thinking you're good at battle, then cripple you the instant you miss an attack.
• Cosmos was one of the only two that was playtested, and "only" lost the fun part of the curse and all of its flavour.
• Flames got its wish granted by an evil genie; it gets fire spells now, but lost the features that interact with them.
• Life is now the worst Oracle at healing, since it no longer has the HP or self-healing capacity to be an empathic pseudo-healer with life link, and the self-healing nerf might or might not apply to temporary HP too (strictly as written, it affects any spell that "restores" temp HP).
• Lore loses the free RK check, and gaining stupefied 1 at CB4 just comes across as a petty insult.
• Tempest got its wish granted by the same evil genie as Flames, gaining air & water spells but losing the feature it wanted them for, and also slows the entire party down if you hit CB4.
• Not sure about Bones yet, though being more vulnerable to the very spells it grants you comes across as a petty insult.
I want to do a more in-depth comparison, but my first impression is that each "Mystery" is now named after the thing it makes you worst at, which is the literal exact opposite of how every other class in the game is designed. (Not counting how certain parts of the class got ripped out of their Mystery, turned into a feat, and then nerfed for no real reason, since that seems to have been done by a different team than the one that rebastard remastered the Mysteries.)
So, the thing you're missing here, Kitusser, is that before PF2R, weapons like the Nightstick opened up more archetype options for the Rogue (in this case, Dual-Weapon Warrior). Don't feel bad about it, you're likely just missing context; it's something that most PF1 veterans will think about, but isn't nearly as apparent if you're only (or primarily) familiar with PF2.
In PF1, one of the most popular Rogue builds was the dual-wielding build (both because it meant more opportunities to land a hit, and thus to land a sneak attack, and also because of a certain infamous Drow), and that popularity carried over into PF2. When a player wants to build a dual-wielding Rogue in PF2, they grab the Dual-Weapon Warrior archetype, and then find themselves lacking a defensive option.
Which is where Twin Parry comes in: It's the archetype's built-in defensive option, meant to replicate Raise a Shield while you're wielding a second weapon instead of a shield. Rogues, before the remaster, were... kinda lacking in ways to get Twin Parry's full bonus, shall we say. There were a grand total of two simple weapons that had [Parry], the Clan Dagger and the Nightstick; of these, the Nightstick was important because it also had [Finesse], letting its accuracy run off the Rogue's KAS.
Thus, if a Rogue wanted to dual-wield (this is the key point here, though I don't think graystone actually mentioned it directly), they would either want a Nightstick in their offhand, or would want to keep one in their golf bag in case they needed it, giving it a unique niche that no other weapon could replicate. (Twin Parry explicitly requires two weapons, explicitly excluding bare hands and shields. Bare hands are likely barred because blocking a sword with a fist is a terrible idea, and shields are barred to prevent you from screwing yourself over; there are no shields or shield augmentations/attachments with [Parry], so even if it was legal, using a shield to Twin Parry would always give you less HP than just Raising a Shield like a normal person.)
(Less importantly, it was also one of the only two simple weapons with both [Finesse] and [Nonlethal], making it relevant if you wanted to take the target alive.)
This was the nightstick's raison d'etre in PF2, before the remaster. It exists to fill a single, specific purpose, and thus was the only way for a dual-wielding Rogue to get an AC bonus equivalent to Raise a Shield. This niche no longer exists in PF2R, thanks to Rogues getting martial weapons, which is what graystone was getting at: There may not be a reason to use the Nightstick NOW, but there was back when it was printed.
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Now, as to your arguments about shield bashing not being a weapon, there's a clear reason why it's not: It's a maneuver, not an object. Calling a shield bash (the action of using a shield to bludgeon an opponent, on the grounds that the shield is just a big chunk of wood that absorbs attacks for you) is equivalent to calling a roundhouse kick (a specific type of martial arts move, often associated with Chuck Norris) a weapon, more or less.
Notably, even if the shield bash was a weapon, this would mean that the shield only counted as a weapon during the Shield Bash action, and at no other times; this is even stated in the shield rules, with an entire section dedicated to describing how a shield can be treated as a weapon while attacking with it. This is telling: If the shield bash actually was a weapon, then the section would be unnecessary, on the grounds that no other weapon needs to explicitly state that a weapon "can be used as a [martial] weapon for attacks". It's even more telling that the shield bash itself states that it's not a weapon, for that matter. ;3
And as to why a reasonable GM wouldn't allow it to be treated as a weapon, there's a reason for that, too: Using a shield as an offhand weapon for Twin Parry is explicitly worse than just using Raise a Shield, since no shields have [Parry]. Using it as a weapon for offensive dual-wielding feats is more logical (albeit strange), and arguably legal as written (it's treated as a weapon for attacking, Double Slice describes itself as making two attacks, and the other offensive feats either call themselves attacks or mention Strikes (which are attacks), so there's room to claim that a shield bash can be treated as a weapon for those feats specifically), but using it as a weapon for the defensive feat would just cut the bonus in half and prevent you from using Shield Block if you have it, so it makes a lot of sense design-wise to forbid Twin Parrying with shields.
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Don't worry, not picking up on it doesn't reflect poorly on you; this is something that looks simple on the surface, but is surprisingly complex when you try to look at why it works the way it does. PF2 usually tries to lock out options if they would be a trap (see Flexible Spellcaster, which has a list of feats that it locks out because they become traps if you have it), so shields being incompatible with Twin Parry is just another case of the game doing that; it keeps you from losing mechanical benefits for the RP, when you could just reflavour Raise a Shield to get the best of both worlds.
...That said, though, the way you're acting kinda does reflect poorly on you, unfortunately. It's okay to not notice that a shield bash isn't a weapon... but if someone points it out to you, and you first respond that the rules text is an overly-draconian misreading that isn't supported by the rules, before finally acquiesing but also turning it into an implied insult with "okay, it's not actually a weapon, but any reasonable GM would ignore the rules here (and anyone who thinks 'isn't a weapon' means 'isn't a weapon' is clearly unreasonable)", then you're just going to make yourself look unreasonable. Not to be rude, but it's okay to admit that you misunderstood something; people misunderstanding each other is the world's most popular sport, after all! (And refusing to acknowledge that graystone was talking about premaster Nightsticks because the weapon predates PF2R doesn't help, either, it kinda just comes across as willful misinterpretation for argument's sake. -_-)
It especially doesn't help that for a Dex-based Ancestors Oracle, Meddling Futures will mathematically never be worth taking, since automatically increasing your Clumsy level every time you use it means it can only break even at best (when you have no Cursebound status), and actually penalises you instead of buffing you.
(The Warrior ancestor explicitly makes you worse at Striking every time you use it, since the to-hit bonus caps at +1. The Adept ancestor will always penalise you for half your Cursebound status (rounded down), because it scales slower than the curse. The Wanderer ancestor doesn't directly penalise you, but not letting you Step means rolling it essentially wastes your entire turn at best or forces you to eat an AoO (and instantly die from being crit) at worst. And while the Sage technically doesn't penalise the spell itself, "spell-rank bonus, with a pity +3 if you're clumsy enough to guarantee everything crits & kills you" is not by any means worth making yourself worse at the things you're built to do for the rest of the encounter.)
Add to this that using it at all makes you actively worse at both striking and using half your skills (since you'd mainly run Dex & Cha skills), and your premaster Ancestor Oracle's basic gameplay loop is now a trap that prevents your character (that is explicitly designed around that loop) from functioning (and will probably kill you). It single-handedly turns the Ancestors Oracle into what people like RPGBot complained about the original version being: "Roll the Spells ancestor or your entire turn is wasted".
I think people would generally be happier if they translated all the mystery benefits into cursebound feats or w.e. As it stands, many of the mysteries are just a pile of focus spells. Tempest gets hit hard because the free electric damage was part of their balance and now all your spells do less damage because screw you I guess. Likewise Lufe was balanced off their increased health which they lose because screw you too. The cursebound geats aren't bad but they sure are flavourless (whoever wrote the feat that's for Life and Bones which is negated by theor curse sure was on something). Feels like a divine sorcerer now.
Like, seriously, if they were going to give every mystery a starting cursebound feat, why didn't they just make the default curse benefit that cursebound feat instead? No need to balance, you know it works already!
Honestly... if they translated the benefits the same way they translated the more unusual curses, that might've arguably made things worse (if that's even possible). Looking at the few unique curses that got preserved as feats... they seem to have been made worse somehow.
Case in point, Ancestors: The most thematically interesting Mystery, but also the one that best illustrates the class' issues. Their original curse was unique, in that it made you roll a favoured action type (out of Strike, Spell, or Skill) each turn, with a 50% chance of getting what you want; using the other two types was a risk, but the favoured type would get a bonus once the curse hit moderate or higher. (Actions that don't fit those three categories were "safe" to use, and having a good selection of safe actions was the key to making Ancestors work.) This was preserved as the Meddling Futures feat, except... worse in literally every way.
1. It only applies to one action, BUT it halves the chance of getting a favourable option by turning one of the previously "safe" action types into a liability (replacing the "your choice" option with a new movement-based one, that notably doesn't allow you to Step).
2. You have to use it every turn if you want to preserve the original curse's flavour, BUT using it increases your Cursebound status (which, since you're an Ancestors Oracle, is quite literally suicidal); you explicitly can't use it every turn if the encounter is more than a couple of turns, and need to take about half an hour to Refocus after every encounter just to do what the original curse did by default. (And importantly, the original curse didn't automatically increase when you rolled your ancestor, which means this is a strict downgrade.)
3. And most cripplingly, if you take it on an Ancestors Oracle (which you would expect to do to recreate the original Ancestors Oracle), then using it actively makes you worse at using it, thanks to the lack of heavy armour incentivising Dex builds (which in turn die to Clumsy):
⠀⠀3a) The Strike ancestor is most obvious, since the to-hit bonus is actually a lie; it cancels out Cursebound 1 for a net zero, but at Cursebound 2 or higher the Clumsy debuff outweighs the measly pittance +1, turning it into "kill your chance of hitting to do more damage, no, wait, you missed"...
⠀⠀3b) But the Wanderer ancestor is a sneaky trap because you can't Step, and thus are forced to eat an AoO if you were trying to get the Warrior or Adept instead... which will probably crit & killed you because rolling debuffs your AC...
⠀⠀3c) And the Adept one will explicitly never improve Dex skills, plain and simple. You need to be Clumsy 1 or 2 to get the +1, or Clumsy 3 or 4 to get the +2, so the +1 will only break even at best, and the +2 will explicitly always be overpowered by your Clumsy value. And considering that you're probably not going to be running many Str skills... yeah. Only real use is for mental skills, which you pobably won't want to be locked into if you were hoping for a different ancestor.
⠀⠀3d) Thus, by elimination, the only one that's actually usable if you're trying to be a real Ancestors Oracle is the Sage ancestor. And that just gives you a bonus equal to the spell's rank, plus a whopping +3 if you're so clumsy you'll die the instant a newborn infant sneezes on you! Hooray!
The end result is that the memes have become true. Old Ancestors Oracle had a reputation for being a trap, when it was really just super-fiddly and unique. But the Re-Messed-Up version of the old Ancestors curse, Meddling Futures, is an actual trap option, in the sense that taking it on an Ancestors Oracle (the very mystery it's intended to emulate) explicitly makes you worse at being an Ancestors Oracle (and will probably kill you when you try to use it). I do hope this was a mistake, and that it "merely" indicates that the [Cursebound] feats were made without accounting for the actual curses themselves (which is still bad, but at least understandable with how rushed the Remaster was)... but if not, then it's a true trap option in the 3e sense, an option designed to look neat but be bad, so you can feel good about yourself for being enough of a "pro" to know not to take it.
A bit of an extreme example, but the fact that it even exists in its current state honestly says a lot about how the Oracle was remade. They put a lot of time and thought into it, but it really does come across as making it simple for simplicity's sake, then punishing you for wanting to get some of the old complexity back. It's... honestly, it's the only class I would consider to be a victim of the Remaster.
Honestly, I'm not sure why they thought ripping out the mystery benefits and making this the only class in the game where your subclass lets you choose how you want to get screwed over (as opposed to choosing how you want to specialise your build like every other class) was an improvement, myself. One of the Oracle's themes has always been finding ways to turn their curse to their advantage; even back in PF1, the curse typically came with both ups and downs. (And notably, the entire reason that curses are tied to specific mysteries now is that Haunted some curses were 99% up and 1% down.)
It's weird that they want to drop that now, especially since it's halfway through an edition that already established that Oracle curses are still a mixed bag, that can be twisted into a benefit the more you embrace the curse. They HAD to know this was going to irreconcilably break basically any character that used the original Oracle; if they were so concerned about making sure "the curse is just a curse" and not a sidegrade, why not just move the plus sides to the mystery and call them a "Divine Conflux" or something, flavoured as using the point where your divine magic meets your curse as a way to join the two into something that's neither wholly positive nor wholly negative?
Overall, it just goes to show that simplicity for simplicity's sake is a fallacy; it's essentially throwing out the baby with the bathwater for simplicity's sake, because taking the baby out of the bath first is too complex.
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Honestly, it would've been a lot better to take a look at the weak points, and provide actual fixes tailored to shoring up each mystery's specific problems.
Case in point, premaster Ancestors: Its problem is that it was the single most complex subclass in the entire game (to the point that it was widely considered a trap option because it has an entirely different playstyle than every other Oracle), due to needing to split your focus in three directions, carry some non-strike/spell/skill options to pad out turns, and know how to use everything in conjunction to work around the limitations. (E.g., if you want bless as a spell, you need to know that increasing its aura isn't a "spell", so you can cast it when you roll the spell ancestor, then use it to fill out the strike & skill ancestors' turns.) And the randomness meant that even if you know how to manage this, and know when to ramp the curse up and when to leave it be, you could still get screwed over if you needed to heal someone NOW but got two bad rolls.
Hence, an easy fix would've been to explicitly state in the mystery's description (preferably in a sidebar) that in terms of player proficiency, Oracle is an expert class and Ancestors is a master Mystery, and then give a quick rundown of how it differs from the others and/or a small example build, and then add an extra action to the mystery, maybe something like this quick mockup:
Quote:
Ancestral Cooperation ◇
Frequency once per battle
Requirement Cursebound 1 or higher
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If your next action would conflict with your predominant ancestor, you do not need to pass a flat check to perform it. Also, if you're at Cursebound 2 or higher, your next action gains the moderate or major curse benefit as appropriate, based on the ancestor whose preferred action it matches.
(Not sure how to word this. Basically, the idea is that if your next action is a Strike, Skill, or Spell, then you evaluate your next action as if you had rolled the Martial, Skillful, or Spellcasting ancestor, respectively. It essentially lets you choose your ancestor for your next action.)
Special While your ancestors like meddling with you, they don't appreciate it when you meddle with them. On your next turn, you are unable to use any action that would normally require a flat check to use. Furthermore, after using this, you need to make it up to your ancestors somehow; I haven't thought this part through yet.
It is a very rough mock-up, admittedly, but the ability to essentially ignore the curse's downsides but reap all of its benefits once a battle, when you really need to use a specific skill or cast a specific spell, would make a WORLD of difference for the Mystery. And the implication that you're offending your ancestors and need to make it up to them before you can do it again both adds flavour (instead of removing flavour) and prevents it from being overpowered or breaking the mystery's theme.
If they had done something like this for each Mystery, we'd all be a lot happier. Evaluate the Mystery, find where it falters, and figure out a way to strengthen it that fits the Mystery's flavour. You don't need to rip the class' soul out and brutalise the empty husk, there are better ways to fix them!
Honestly, to me, it feels like Dubious Knowledge was originally intended to be the default behaviour of a failed RK check, splitting the difference between success and crit fail, but was cut and relegated to a feat to ease the burden on the GM. (On account of 2-1-2-1 being a more natural pattern than 2-1-0-1, "you vaguely remember something but are a bit confused about the specifics" fitting RK's other results more than "you somehow know nothing whatsoever about this", flail--err, failing forward giving RK more value in hopes of encouraging non-RK-specialist-builds to try using it on subjects they're familiar with, and also giving more opportunity to have fun with the fail.)
So, they changed it into a feat, and made sure to clarify that you get one correct and one incorrect and don't have a way to differentiate which is which. Because that wording is the key to this entire discussion: You know that the two pieces of information are different, and that the difference matters. If you automatically think they're both true, or automatically think they're both false, then there's no differentiation, and the clause is not only invalid but misleading. It only makes sense if you know that your knowledge is, in fact, dubious, and that exactly one but not both is actually true.
Basically, it's meant to model things like:
• "The Cucco Farmer's Almanac says the dodongo dislikes smoke, while the Cave of Scholars Encyclopedia says their mouths are flammable, but they've been extinct for so long that nobody knows which is true."
• "Ma says X, Pa says Y, and for some reason this is the hill they'll both die on."
• "Your favourite author is into hard sci-fi, and always does their research, but they keep flip-flopping between whether it's Z or Q. Maybe there are different subspecies or something, who knows."
The text says "Weapons with the kickback trait don’t gain that
trait’s benefits when using an air cartridge firing system" and "they’re the default used in Arcadian air repeaters."
Full stop.
I agree this change was probably meant to be a buff to long air repeaters, but that's not what the text says.
At the very least, I think it should be clarified in PFS sanctioning. There will be GMs who will interpret this in the worst way.
The text does say that, but it also says they "[impose] a –10-foot penalty to the attached firearm’s range increment" (which everyone is ignoring) and that the firearm must "be modified to replace its normal firing mechanism with an air cartridge firing system" before the air cartridge firing system's stats are applied. It also lists the firing system's cost as 75 gp, which is significantly higher than the long air repeater's 9 gp price tag.
Full stop.
The air cartridge firing system also has a Usage requirement, specifically "Usage attached to firearm (firing mechanism)". And the rules for firearm customizations, the category which includes the system, states that they must be attached to a firearm before you can use them.
Fuller stop.
The text is actually extremely explicit that the description of the firearm customization air cartridge firing system ONLY applies to firearms which explicitly have the player-purchaseable air cartridge firing system attached to the firearm. That's what the usage requirement means: That it has to be used in the specific manner to provide its mechanical functionality, both benefits and drawbacks. The long air repeater may have an internal air cartridge system, but it does not come standard with the Air Cartridge Firing System item, and thus does not apply the rules text of the Air Cartridge Firing System item... and even if it did, it would have to apply the entire rules text for the air cartridge firing system, instead of picking & choosing which parts to apply and which to ignore.
Any GM who interprets the long air repeater as having the penalties of [Kickback] but not the benefits is kinda going against the game's rules, since "the long air repeater secretly has the effect of the air cartridge firing system customization even though the weapon's statblock doesn't say it's customized" is a pretty hard argument to make for a game that doesn't have hidden rules like this. ;P This is doubly true if they don't also say that it has a 50-foot range instead of the official 60 feet, that it costs 84 gp instead of the official 9 gp, and that no firing mechanism customizations can be addeded to it because it already has an attached firing mechanism, since you aren't actually allowed to selectively mandate part of an item's mechanics but ignore the rest.
(It may also be relevant to note that the ACFS actually does have a PFS note, that states that "Weapons that install an air cartridge firing system and that have the kickback trait retain the trait and the associated drawbacks." Going strictly by that text, weapons that have an air cartridge firing system by default would have to both have [Kickback] and install a different air cartridge firing system to gain [Kickback]'s drawbacks but not its benefits, would they not?)
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Going strictly by the text, if you want to apply the ACFS' stats to a long air repeater, then you have to remove the repeater's default system and replace it with a different ACFS. Which does sound kinda silly, but...
Really, the air cartridge firing system says that it's the default used in air repeaters, not the default used in long air repeaters. They're different items. ;3
Okay, to people that thing the long air repeater doesn't benefit from [Kickback] because it uses compressed air... long story short, there's a critical detail you're missing: The long air repeater defaults to using an air cartridge mechanism. Its statblock accounts for this, and has the air cartridge's adjustments built into it. If you believe that the [Kickback] trait doesn't benefit the air repeater because it uses an air cartridge system, then do you also believe that the long air repeater actually has 50-foot range instead of the stated 60 feet, because of the air cartridge's range penalty? Probably not, because that would be pretty silly. ;P
But yeah, there's an extremely important detail that's kinda getting glossed over here: The air cartridge mechanism is a weapon mod. It's a DIY replacement firing mechanism for guns that normally use a different mechanism, and thus has to be designed to mate with rifling and projectiles that aren't actually designed to use compressed air. And being something that just anyone can install means it can't be expected to be installed professionally, either; it's entirely possible that a given PC can do a perfect install job, but they also might not have the tools necessary to create a perfectly airtight connection. And it also has to be removable, which means it has to be entirely self-contained and can't make permanent modifications to the base gun to better accomodate it. All things together, this means that using an air cartridge firing mechanism in a powder gun is less efficient than having a gun that's designed by the finest craftsdwarves to use compressed air from the ground up, that can be properly machined for its air cartridge system and has an air cartridge system that's properly machined for it, and assembled with high-precision factory tools operated by highly trained golems
What it boils down to is this:
• The air cartridge mechanism is less powerful than a black powder mechanism, when used in a black powder gun; it's an off-the-shelf aftermarket rig customisation marketed to firearm enthusiasts, installed without factory tools by someone who may or may not be trained in the manufacture of firearms. Weapons that normally use black powder have a range penalty and don't benefit from [Kickback] when using an air cartridge mechanism instead.
• The long air repeater is actually designed to use an air cartridge mechanism, from the ground up. This means it's actually designed around its firing mechanism, and can accomodate a larger, more powerful system with a better compressor as a result. (Or, conversely, may have a smaller mechanism with a tighter chamber and better rifling, to force the air into a smaller space and let less air escape around the projectile.) Either way, it isn't trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and its stats account for its built-in firing mechanism.
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tl;dr: The thing to remember is that the air cartridge firing system is a replacement firing mechanism. Its stats only apply to weapons where it replaces the default firing mechanism. If you want to apply the air cartridge system's stat adjustments to a long air repeater, then you have to rip out its built-in air cartridge system and replace it with the customisation version.
Darksol, you're looking at it backwards. Warrior Bards don't make Strikes just to proc Martial Performance. They make Strikes because they're Warrior Bards; Martial Performance is a rider, not a reason.
The Warrior Bard isn't casting spells every turn, and only throwing in a token Strike out of obligation every so often because they "have" to use the feat they're stuck with. The Warrior Bard is making Strikes when they have a good opportunity to do so already, with or without Martial Performance. They've already chosen to make both Strikes and spells, and will continue to do so even if you strip them of all their feats.
So, don't look at it as "wasting a turn to use Martial Performance vs. playing correctly to use Lingering Composition", because that's the wrong mindset. It's a question of whether a Bard that's already making Strikes still wants Lingering Composition, or whether the new Martial Performance will be good enough to let them forego it.
No rule actually exists that requires tiny races to spend extra actions to do things, the only reference to this "tiny penalty" is in the old sprite feat that removes said penalty. The rules for tiny PCs in howl of the wild makes no mention of this action tax for example.
It kind of reminds me of the pf1 feat "prone sniper" which removes the circumstance penalty to using ranged weapons while prone. A penalty that just does not exist.
By which I mean to say, that if evanescent wings has been Erratad to remove reference to this penalty, than it has basically ceased existing
Hmm... possibly. It looks like the penalty was extrapolated from the rules for Tiny PCs, and Tiny PC reach in particular. Let's see... The Sprite statblock includes this reference for Tiny PCs:
Quote:
PCs are typically Small or Medium size, but most sprite PCs are Tiny instead! Being Tiny comes with its own set of rules about space and reach. Your Tiny sprite can enter another creature's space, which is important because your melee Strikes typically have no reach, meaning you must enter their space to attack them. Like other Tiny creatures, you don't automatically receive lesser cover from being in a larger creature's space, but circumstances might allow you to Take Cover. You can purchase weapons, armor, and other items for your size with the same statistics as normal gear, except that melee weapons have a reach of 0 for you (or a reach 5 feet shorter than normal if they have the reach trait). Remember to adjust the Bulk of items and your Bulk limit for Tiny size (see Items and Sizes).
It brings attention to their reach, connecting it to Strikes. Not much, but it gives us somewhere to start; the pre-errata Evanescent Wings corroborates this, by specifically calling attention to Sprites having trouble reaching objects 4 feet above them. We know that Tiny creatures have 0 reach in general, not just melee weapons, but that doesn't mean anything in and of itself... right? Not quite, actually!
The section on Range and Reach is the missing piece here: It clarifies that reach is "how far you can physically reach with your body or a weapon", and notes that "you" (i.e., Small/Medium PCs) typically have 5-foot reach. And while we mainly use reach for Strikes and other combat options, the implication here is that reach is what you use to interact with anything, and that having 0 reach means you need to be right beside something to interact with it. This is easy if it's horizontal distance, since you're considered to be at an unspecified location in your space (and thus can just say you're beside another object in your space, if necessary)... but vertical distance is a problem, since most Sprites explicitly aren't tall enough to reach objects 4 feet above them.
And that goes back to Evanescent Wings' example: Small/Medium creatures have 5 vertical reach, and thus can intrinsically reach an object that's four feet off the ground even if they're prone. But Sprites have 0 reach, and thus can't interact with an object if it's one or more feet above them, going by the Range/Reach rules. The extra action tax is still odd, and doesn't line up with any known use of Interact... but judging by how old Evanescent Wings adds a [Move] trait whenever you interact with an object that's in your space but outside of your reach, the implication seems to be that you had to either Climb, Leap, or waste a Step or a Stride getting high enough to interact with objects that were outside of your reach. (Which is mostly consistent with normal rules, where a typical Medium PC would have to use a Step or a Stride to get close enough to interact with an object that's 6 feet away, and would have to Climb or Leap to reach something that's outside their own vertical reach. It does falter a bit if Leap is the intended second action here, though, since that might also require using Grab an Edge or taking Rapid Mantel to interact with objects slightly above you.)
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So, my conclusion is that it isn't a special rule, as much as the logical conclusion of how standard reach rules interact with Tiny PCs and their 0-foot reach. It could be clearer, yes, but it's the same as if a Medium race had a feat that said something like this: "You can interact with an object nine feet off the ground with a single Interact action, but that action gains the [Move] trait."
Hmm... been thinking about it, and the new Evanescent Wings is good, but removes a tool that the Tiny flying ancestry kinda needs. That's easy to fix, though, it just needs a slight retouch. I'd suggest either:
• Integrate the original version into the Sprite as a core mechanic, like they did with the Strix's Nestling Fall.
• Combine the two versions into a single feat. Might look something like this quick mock-up:
Quote:
Evanescent Wings
[Sprite]
You've manifested wings that can flutter for brief spurts. You don't need to spend any additional actions to reach something in your space that a Medium creature could reach. For instance, if you wanted to open a cookie jar located four feet off the ground, you only need to spend a single Interact action to do so. When you use Evanescent Wings to flutter to a higher place in your space, your action gains the move trait. You also gain the following action:
Flutter ♦ Frequency once per round
Drawing on your innate magic, you force your wings to carry you further than they normally could. You Fly. If you don’t normally have a fly Speed, you gain a fly Speed of 15 feet for this movement. If you aren’t on solid ground at the end of this movement, you fall.
(If this is overtuned, a possible fix might be to turn the entire feat off for the rest of the turn after using Flutter, to represent overtaxing your wings and needing to let them rest for a moment before using them again. That could create funky action ordering shenanigans, though, so I'm not 100% sure.)
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Overall, the errata looks good, there are a lot of improvements bundled in them thar hills changes. I'm guessing this was just a quick copy-and-paste replacement to ensure consistency with Strix (and presumably future flying ancestries), but forgot to account for Sprite's size as a result. No biggie, it happens, especially after all the work you guys have put into getting the remaster and ORC ready on such short notice, while still putting out other books as well. Hope you get some time to cool down after running yourselves ragged like that!
Hmm... I'm not sure, but it looks like the new version of Evanescent Wings is actually a slight nerf to Sprites, hidden within a buff. It doesn't look like it was intentional, it reads as if they just plain forgot that Sprite is a Tiny race, but it does seem to be a nerf nonetheless.
The original version looked like this:
Quote:
You've manifested wings that can flutter for brief spurts. You don't need to spend any additional actions to reach something in your space that a Medium creature could reach. For instance, if you wanted to open a cookie jar located four feet off the ground, you only need to spend a single Interact action to do so. When you use Evanescent Wings to flutter to a higher place in your space, your action gains the move trait.
The new version, however, is now a once-per-round action that does this:
Quote:
You’ve manifested wings that can flutter for brief spurts. You Fly. If you don’t normally have a fly Speed, you gain a fly Speed of 15 feet for this movement. If you aren’t on solid ground at the end of this movement, you fall.
Comparing the two, the errata version is a mobility aid... but at the same time, either doubles the action cost of interacting with objects out of their reach, or completely removes their ability to interact with objects out of their reach, I'm not sure which. Unless I'm missing something, then...
• With the original version: A Sprite can fly within their space as needed, to reach any object within their space as if they were Medium. This does not cost any extra actions, and does not grant them a flight speed.
• With the errata'd version: A Sprite can spend one action to Fly, with a flight speed of 15' if they don't already have a fly speed. They will always be on solid ground at the end of this action, either by landing or falling. This thus forces them to spend a second action to interact with objects that are out of their reach and on a landable surface (doubling the action cost compared to the original, pre-errata version), and prevents them from interacting with any objects that are sufficiently high above the ground altogether (since they have no time to interact with the object between ending the movement and falling).
Overall, I'm not sure, but it makes the new version seem like a bit of a nerf compared to the original, on the grounds that while it does give them a slow fly speed, it also severely impacts their action economy when trying to interact with objects that aren't at ground level (and in some cases, makes interacting with objects that aren't at ground level impossible as written). It comes across as if it was written for a Medium or Small ancestry, and doesn't actually account for Sprite being a Tiny ancestry instead?
On a more serious note, it makes a lot of logical sense, at least using real-world logic. Runelords specialise in sinning, while divination is a portent from on high. It actually makes perfect sense that the biggest thing God would want to tell them is "stop sinning, guys, it's gonna screw you over in ways you really don't want". And if that's what you get from your divinations, when runelords really don't care if they're screwed over like that or not, shunning divination would make a lot of logical sense.
Y'know how the Bible mentions people hardening their hearts, and thus not being able to hear God's voice? That's what happened here. Runelords hardened their hearts, and now they can't hear their gods' voices anymore. And if you can't hear their voices, then you can't receive divine messages from them, and thus don't get any divinations.
A spellbook would sell for 5 sp. Having spells written in it wouldn't increase the price. Because selling spells isn't how adventurers should be earning money.
I call bullpucky on that. A spellbook is obviously worth 5sp + the cost of Learn a Spell of every spell within (or half that on resale).
What is there in the rules that would indicate it has no value? That's ridiculous I say. Spellbooks are rightfully some of the most valuable treasure around.
Where in the rules does it indicate that it has any higher value than that?
The players at the table can decide to have a spellbook sell for any amount that they decide is appropriate. But I am seeing nothing in the rules that says that spell knowledge - or any other knowledge - in a book makes the book sell for a higher value than the cost of the book itself.
Well, for one, the page you linked explicitly states that it's the price for a blank spellbook, which means that saying a spellbook with spells in it sells for 5 sp breaks at minimum one rule. Apart from that...
• Spellbooks with giant silverfish skin in them are worth a pretty penny.
• An enemy's spellbook is viable treasure for a wizard, which tells us that it's worth more than 5 sp.
• Scrolls are priced based on the spell contained within, which tells us that spell knowledge is valuable. Funny how no one mentioned that, since it's actually hyper-relevant here (as described below).
• It's not outright stated, but Morlibint implies that recovered spellbooks are valuable. (On the grounds that he collects rare & valuable tomes, and runs a bookstore. He's the exact sort of person who'd want to buy a spellbook with spells in it, and some of the rare & valuable tomes he seeks are very likely to be spellbooks from notable casters.)
• On the subjects of rare & valuable spellbooks, look up Thresholds of Truth. It's explicitly a spellbook, and is considered a treasure trove; it's clear that it's meant to be priceless, it's that valuable.
• Also, grimoires as a whole. Sure, they have a special effect, but it's pretty telling that every single non-blank spellbook to actually have a price attached is explicitly worth 90 gp at absolute minimum, isn't it?
Now, normal spellbooks are just ink on parchment, but their value comes from spells. Remember, spellbooks are considered to be viable treasure because of the spells contained within, and blank spellbooks are worth 1 gp, so it's clear from the rules that any spellbook with one or more spells in it is worth 1 gp. (And again, most importantly, remember that the spellbook's description explicitly states that 1 gp is the price of a blank spellbook.) No sane GM would ever claim that a non-blank spellbook can only be sold for 5 sp, and any GM that does so is abusing Rule Zero to rip the PCs off.
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As to why scrolls are hyper-relevant to the discussion: Does anyone remember Learn a Spell? It specifies that spells can be learned from someone who knows the spell, or more relevantly, "magical writing like a spellbook or scroll". This gives us a direct point of reference for the monetary value of spell knowledge: A spell is worth at least as much as a scroll containing that spell. If someone wants to learn a spell, and doesn't have a teacher, then they're going to be willing to pay for it in written form. (And it probably doesn't matter to them whether that written form is a scroll, or pages ripped from a spellbook.) Add in the ability to borrow spells from another caster's spellbook, and it's pretty clear (from the rules!) that a spellbook is very valuable to any wizard that doesn't know the spells it contains.
Personally, I'd just like the axes to be turned into traits, and players are allowed (but not required) to attach one of [Good] or [Evil], and one of [Law] or [Chaos], to their characters. (With renames, of course, to avoid the vulnerability to illegal legal damage.) Or leave the field there, but make it optional instead of mandatory (and perhaps allow players to make up their own alignments, like, e.g., "Chaotic Fun" or "Chronic Good"). Leave the concept of alignment as a broad filter that aids in interpreting edicts & anathema, but don't actually attach any mechanics to it. (Since the mechanics are attached to the new holy war traits, instead.)
Doing it that way would leave the option to have an alignment for flavour reasons, while at the same way adding a context & lens through which their actual drives can be interpreted. (Case in point, "Help the oppressed" takes a very different meaning depending on how you look at things. If a resource-poor nation is invading a more abundant nation, but using excessive force and brutal tactics in the process, then it's easy to see both sides as "oppressed"; the victim nation is being oppressed by their invaders, and the invading nation is oppressed by their neighbour hoarding all the resources. Knowing which side the character stands with helps you suss out who they see as oppressed and who they see as the oppressors.)
I imagine people that actually care about this will do it anyways, just dedicate a line in their character profile to classic alignment. It would be nice to see it be official, though, as an acknowledgment that edicts & anathema can easily be ambiguous if you don't know how the character see the world itself.
Making it official would undermind the whole point of the change in the first place: keeping them from getting sued.
I'm aware. (They probably would've won the lawsuit, seeing how (IIRC) the OGL contains a clause that makes it illegal to change it the way WotC wanted to change it, contract law always sides against "I have altered the terms of the deal, pray I don't alter them further" (meaning they'd still have the right to use OGL 1.0 anyways), but that's neither here nor there.)
It would still be nice to have, though, just phrased in a legally distinct way. Rename the archetypal four, and make them into pairs of exclusive traits instead of a tic-tac-toe board, possibly with room to add additional trait pair "axes" later on (e.g., [Freedom] vs. [Duty-Bound]). Or make it a generic write-in, where you describe your character's overarching outlook in two words or less; that's legally very distinct, yet would be immediately recognisable as Alignment but more freeform. And either way, probably give it a new name, someting like, say... "Ethos".
I get why they did it, and I don't blame them for being paranoid about WotC's attack on the concept of D&D-like tabletop RPGs. Would be nice to have, is all.
Locking out d8+ martial weapons provides an ironclad guarantee that the Ruffian's raw power maxes out at a d8 [Reach] weapon with no other traits
One question I think that goes unaddressed here is... is that a good thing?
Rogues are a martial weapon class. Even before the remaster that was true (albeit with a limited selection).
How much sense then does it make to try to hard lock balance for one subclass around a specific simple weapon? Doesn't that in effect put a bit of a penalty on the Ruffian?
That feels like an odd stance to celebrate, given how a vocal subsection of this forum thinks Strength is already an inferior stat.
I do agree it's quick, though. Quick solutions are the name of the game for the Remaster, so it's not that surprising.
I don't know, honestly. It might be good, it might be bad, there are valid points either way. It was probably meant to try to maintain their premaster power level rather than blatantly increase it, and perhaps to try to preserve some semblance of balance between Rogues and other martials. (And, admittedly, may have been meant to keep all the Legion of Longspear Ruffians from having to upgrade all at once, the polearm supply chain would dry up long before they were all kitted out!) It may have been meant to fit with the standard "ruffian" image of being underequipped compared to a true military, more than for actual balance, who knows. Or it may even have been that they just wanted to adjust the racket as quickly as possible, and simply chose to tread water instead of taking the time to evaluate whether its current position was actually good or not.
The "why" of the decision is something we probably won't know unless we're told, though we can make a few guesses. And whether maintaining that specific balance point is good for the game is a very good question, one that I don't have the stats to even try to answer. But whatever the reason they had for keeping it, widening the pool like that is a simple, quick way to do it, clumsy as it may be.
I love how a class who doesn't need a buff gets a buff and people complain about the buff being too small...
Saying it's a "buff" doesn't really track when Longspear Ruffian is still the top tier build for the subclass by nature of having the best trait and the best damage dice there is. There is no reason to take a D6 Martial weapon other than for flavor purposes (or for Flickmace, which is already nerfed to oblivion and flimsy for its cost). At best it is a sidegrade for non-optimizers and at worst it's just a quality of life change.
The complaint is that the "buff" is needlessly arbitrary and overly restrictive when the point of said "buff" was to remove the overly restrictiveness it originally possessed; the expectation that it would simply be replaced with another even worse restriction wasn't really on the table here.
Of course, I imagine this restriction was put in place because the few martial weapons that Rogue originally had access to were all D6 weapons, and Paizo was too afraid to allow D8 martial weapons when Rogues didn't have access to them to begin with, even though ironically, Ruffian Rogues are already running around with D8 weapons anyway.
Hmm... I've been thinking about it, and it actually makes perfect sense to limit Ruffians to simple d8/martial d6... if the intent was to increase versatility but not power; it's a sidegrade, not an upgrade. If we assume that the Longspear Ruffian was their balancing point, then that puts the Ruffian's optimal offensive weapon at a d8 weapon with [Reach] and no other traits. Allowing d6 martial weapons gives them access to a wider selection of traited weapons, which in turn allows them to be built in different ways, all of which are balanced out by doing slightly less damage than the vanilla longspear (some of these other ways may, yes, be traps, but may be preferable nonetheless depending on the character's intended personality and background).
The first thing of note is that it gives you a much wider pool of weapons to choose from, which in turn also gives you a much wider pool of weapon traits to choose from. Some of these are traps for a Rogue, yes, but that's okay; PF2's math is tight enough that choosing, say, a [Sweep] weapon over a [Reach] one isn't enough to break your character. (And of course, you can always carry both, and choose which one you want for any given situation! Sometimes spreading the damage a bit can be useful, after all, if you've got a couple nearly-dead enemies clustered together.) Some of them give you access to maneuver traits, which can be pretty nifty for an Athletics specialist Ruffian. And probably most significantly, some of them have have both [Reach] and other traits, allowing you to sacrifice a little bit of damage to enable other tactics without juggling weapons if that's your jam.
And this pool-widening, in turn, lines up with how weapons are balanced: You can choose between a higher damage die with minimal features, or drop the die down a bit to buy more features for your weapon. You get your longspear if you want to build for damage, you can knock the damage die down to a d6 if you want more versatility, and you can knock it down to a d4 if your game's as horny as Calistria if you want to add [Nonlethal] too. Everything's a tradeoff; nothing outright surpasses or overshadows the longspear, preserving the versatility-vs.-power balancing that the game applies to weapons as a whole. In effect, the rule is the game's way of acknowledging that [Reach] really is worth a whole damage die size increase in & of itself for the Ruffian. (Conversely, if d8 martial weapons are allowed, then the Ruffian gains access to both the lance and the injection spear, both of which are direct upgrades to the longspear. Not to mention all the other d8 weapons which have both [Reach] and other traits.)
Is it the best way to do this? No, not at all; it's heavy-handed and rather clumsy, from a purely mechanical design perspective, and most of the best non-longspear options were already available thanks to being [Finesse] and/or [Agile]. But it is both effective and, perhaps more importantly, quick. Locking out d8+ martial weapons provides an ironclad guarantee that the Ruffian's raw power maxes out at a d8 [Reach] weapon with no other traits, unless a stronger simple weapon is released (which is unlikely to happen), without having to think about whether any specific martial d8s are or aren't viable; it makes eyeballing weapon balance a little bit quicker, and a little bit easier.
Hmm... this looks like a bit of internal miscommunication, honestly. Let's look at the base rules for attacking and item damage, and also anything else I can find:
1. The Strike action is explicitly described as "targeting one creature" and comparing the Strike's result to "the target creature's AC", with no mention of objects anywhere in its description. As written, it cannot target or successfully hit objects.
Strike wrote:
You attack with a weapon you're wielding or with an unarmed attack, targeting one creature within your reach (for a melee attack) or within range (for a ranged attack). Roll the attack roll for the weapon or unarmed attack you are using, and compare the result to the target creature's AC to determine the effect.
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2. The Item Damage rules state that an object typically "takes damage only when a creature is directly attacking it", and lists doors & traps as common examples. This could in theory refer to Force Open, which has the potential to deal damage and has the [Attack] trait, but that doesn't appear to be the intent; Force Open uses different language than the Item Damage rules (it's called out as prying the object open and takes a penalty if you don't use a crowbar, and usually skips damage & breaks objects directly)... and more importantly, as written, it cannot be used on traps, and is thus invalid for one of the two aforementioned common Item Damage examples. (There is potential for Force Open's target list being examples instead of limitations, since it mentions smashing walls with a high enough result. However, this conflicts with critical successes, the highest distinguishable result, explicitly doing no damage, so it falls squarely in the nebulous realm of "ask your GM".)
Regardless of the circumstances, the Item Damage rules' (and by extension, the game's) assumption is that attended objects will rarely if ever be attacked, unless the objects' attendants intentionally place them in harm's way (most frequently with Shield Block); even monsters being able to damage your items are the exception and not the rule. There seems to be no such assumption for unattended objects, however; typical obstable and obstacle-like objects appear to be presumed to be valid attack targets by the rules.
Item Damage wrote:
An item can be broken or destroyed if it takes enough damage. Every item has a Hardness value. Each time an item takes damage, reduce any damage the item takes by its Hardness. The rest of the damage reduces the item’s Hit Points. Normally an item takes damage only when a creature is directly attacking it—commonly targeted items include doors and traps. A creature that attacks you doesn’t normally damage your armor or other gear, even if it hits you. However, the Shield Block reaction can cause your shield to take damage as you use it to prevent damage to yourself, and some monsters have exceptional abilities that can damage your items.
Force Open wrote:
Using your body, a lever, or some other tool, you attempt to forcefully open a door, window, container or heavy gate. With a high enough result, you can even smash through walls. Without a crowbar, prying something open takes a –2 item penalty to the Athletics check to Force Open.
Critical Success You open the door, window, container, or gate and can avoid damaging it in the process.
Success You break the door, window, container, or gate open, and the door, window, container, or gate gains the broken condition. If it’s especially sturdy, the GM might have it take damage but not be broken.
Critical Failure Your attempt jams the door, window, container, or gate shut, imposing a –2 circumstance penalty on future attempts to Force it Open.
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3. The Material Statistics list provides relevant statistics for damaging and breaking all sorts of objects, and specifically calls out shields, armour, and walls as typical examples of thin, ordinary, and reinforced/durable objects respectively. This tells us that these sorts of item are intended to be breakable, but doesn't say anything about how to break them, so it's irrelevant to the discussion.
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4. The Doors, Gates, and Walls sidebar provides relevant statistics for breaking through those three objects, while also distinguishing between climbing, smashing, and forcing open. Notably, it also mentions that sufficiently strong walls require downtime to break through, which implicitly confirms that walls which aren't strong enough can be broken down without downtime (and thus, by extension, can be broken down as part of a normal adventurer's day, using the rules defined in the book). Unfortunately, it doesn't specify how the game intends for you to demolish objects, which does hamper it somewhat; the only rules attached to the word "demolish" are a downtime activity from Kingmaker and a rune from Fumbus, neither of which was out when the CRB was released. (Not going to quote this in full, since the most relevant parts are the subsection names. It's mostly an addon to the Item Damage rules. I will quote the strong walls thing I mentioned, though, for quick reference.)
Doors, Walls, and Gates - Demolish (last two sentences) wrote:
Strong walls, such as well-maintained masonry or hewn stone, can’t be broken without dedicated work and proper tools. Getting through such walls requires downtime.
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5. The [Razing] trait is used to indicate that a weapon does extra damage when damaging objects, structures, and vehicles. This, by extension, states that rules exist (and/or are intended to exist) which allow you to deal damage to non-creature targets with these weapons. In particular, explicit inclusion of shields (which can take damage in place of the intended target, via Shield Block and similar abilities) and animated objects (objects which are mechanically creatures) implies that these aren't the only objects the trait is meant to be used against, and the mention of vehicles means that these weapons can be used to damage vehicles (with an unspecified action, that may or may not be Strike).
Razing trait wrote:
Razing weapons are particularly good at damaging objects, structures, and vehicles. Whenever you deal damage to an object (including shields and animated objects), structure, or vehicle with a razing weapon, the object takes an amount of additional damage equal to double the number of weapon damage dice.
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6. Vehicle rules make an interesting assumption about what sorts of attack are allowed to be used against a vehicle. This would be considered a case of Specific Beats General if it was explicitly stated; however, it's taken for granted, as if the writers assume everyone knew it already. Namely, the rules for uncontrolled vehicles assume that vehicular movement can trigger an AoO, which conflicts with AoOs explicitly only being triggerable by creatures. (It's hard to say whether this is a typo, whether it implies that the vehicle should be treated as a creature, whether it means that the driver is the target creature, or whether it assumes that vehicles are valid AoO targets despite not being creatures. The context suggests that it might be treating the vehicle as an extension of the driver, though, since the AoO can paralyse or knock out the driver.)
Uncontrolled Vehicles (first paragraph) wrote:
Some situations can cause a pilot to lose control of their vehicle. Most commonly, this is due to a failed piloting check for a reckless action, but it can also occur if a round passes without a pilot using a move action to control the vehicle or Stopping the vehicle. A vehicle can also become uncontrolled if the pilot becomes unable to act during a move action to control the vehicle. For example, if a vehicle’s movement triggers an Attack of Opportunity that knocks the pilot unconscious or paralyzes them, the vehicle becomes uncontrolled.
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7. We know that Hazards can be damaged, and even destroyed. The language used allows them to be attacked, with a more in-depth subsection to describe the results thereof. (And, significantly, to point out that the rules for attacking hazards also apply to "most damaging spells or other effects in addition to attacks." This is important, since it distinguishes between damage spells, damage effects, and attacks; it tells us that there is at least one way to directly attack a hazard, which deals damage but is neither a damage spell nor a damage effect. Or, more pointedly, it clarifies that skill effects which deal damage are not considered to be "attacks" for the purpose of attacking hazards, but are instead "damaging effects".
The main section here also states that damaging mechanical traps & other physical hazards "works like damaging objects"; while it means that hazards use the Item Damage system, it might also mean that the above applies to objects as well: Effects which deal damage (which would include Force Open on regular success) are considered to be "damaging effects" and not "attacks", for the purpose of attacking objects & hazards. (...Or it might not mean that. It's also possible that damaging hazards works like damaging objects, but damaging objects doesn't work like damaging hazards. There's no explicit statement that it works both ways; the rule implying the reciprocal is a natural reading, but not the only possible reading.)
Damaging a Hazard (first paragraph) wrote:
Rather than trying to carefully disable a hazard, a character might just smash it. Damaging a mechanical trap or another physical hazard works like damaging objects: the hazard reduces the damage it takes by its Hardness. In most cases, hitting the hazard also triggers it, as explained in Attacking a Hazard below. If a hazard’s Hit Points are reduced to its Broken Threshold (BT) or lower, the hazard becomes broken and can’t be activated, though it can still be repaired. If it’s reduced to 0 HP, it’s destroyed and can’t be repaired. (See page 272 in Chapter 6 for more information on damaging objects.)
Attacking a Hazard wrote:
If someone hits a hazard—especially if it’s a mechanical trap—they usually trigger it, though you might determine otherwise in some cases. An attack that breaks the hazard might prevent it from triggering, depending on the circumstances. If the hazard has multiple parts, breaking one part might still trigger the trap. For example, if a trap has a trip wire in one location and launches an attack from another location, severing the trip wire could still trigger the attack. Destroying a trap in one blow almost never triggers it. These rules also apply to most damaging spells or other effects in addition to attacks.
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8. Moving to the GMG, the section on Saying "Yes, But" lists making a directed attack against an object, and then making foes save against that object's effect, as an example. The directed attack the example uses is produce flame, which targets "1 creature" (and thus is directly comparable to a Strike); we clearly see that the GM allows it to target an object, which overrides the wording, so now we have to Jeopardy out where the "Yes, But" applies here.
There are two potential interpretations: Either the question is "Can I attack this object?", or the question is "Can I blow up this barrel of explosives?" Of the two, the latter is more likely, because it almost directly matches an example given in the first paragraph, of "a player who wants to use a fire spell to deliberately ignite a barrel of oil". If we assume that the correlation is meaningful, then we can observe that the player implicitly assumes they can use their fire spell on an object, and only needs to ask whether they can do so to deliberately ignite it specifically. The implicit automatic permission to use a "Target 1 creature" attack on an object tells us that either narrative overrides rules here (and creature-targeting attacks can also target objects if it makes sense, and/or that real-world logic trumps rules here), attacks that specify that they target a creature are meant to also be valid against objects even without GM permission, or whoever wrote this section assumed attacking objects is automatically valid. (Note that this is just one inerpretation. It's also possible that the example player is asking both for permission to ignite the barrel, and to attack an object with a creature-targeting effect. This feels like a less natural interpretation, though.)
It may also be relevant to note that this may potentially contradict the rules for attack hazards, depending on whether spells with the [Attack] trait count as "attacks" or "damaging spells" here. This sort of internal inconsistency makes it harder to answer the overarching question, sadly.
Saying "Yes, But" wrote:
Some of the most memorable moments come from situations that inherently call for a rules interpretation, like when a player wants to do something creative using the environment. The variety of these situations is limited only by the imagination of your players. It’s usually better to say “yes” than “no,” within reason. For example, imagine a player wants to do something borderline nonsensical like grabbing a spider and squeezing it to force it to use its web attack. But what about a player who wants to use a fire spell to deliberately ignite a barrel of oil? Surely that should have some effect!
This is where you can use a variant of the well-known improv “Yes, and,” technique: you can say “Yes, but.” With “Yes, but,” you allow the player’s creative idea, but tie it into the world and the game rules via some sort of additional consequences, potentially adding the uncertainty of an additional roll.
Here are some simple ways you might implement this tool. Almost all of these require an action or are part of another action.
• Get a fleeting benefit without a roll. Example: dip a sword into a burning brazier to add 1 fire damage on the next attack against a troll.
• Require a check, then apply a circumstance bonus to the PC’s action. Example: swing from a chandelier above a foe.
• Require a check, then apply a circumstance penalty or condition to a foe. Example: throw a barrel over a monster’s head.
• Require an attack roll or skill check to deal minor damage and gain another benefit. Examples: jump from a higher elevation down onto a foe for a small amount of damage, potentially knocking the foe prone; throw sand in an opponent’s eyes.
• Require a directed attack against an object, then allow foes to attempt saving throws against the object’s effect at a DC you choose. Example: cast a produce flame spell at a barrel of explosives.
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9: Perhaps most relevantly, there's a significant errata that communicates part of the designer intent here, and probably explains a lot of the inconsistencies.
Pathfinder Core Rulebook Errata wrote:
Pages 316-407 and 573: Damaging spells and items meant to harm PCs do way too much damage for your gear to survive if it could be targeted, so such spells almost never are supposed to be able to damage objects. A few target lines slipped by with "creatures or objects." Remove the ability to target or damage objects from acid splash, acid arrow, eclipse burst, polar ray, sunburst, fire ray, moon beam, force bolt, and the horn of blasting. Limit hydraulic push to "creatures and unattended objects."
(It also shows that acid splash is considered a "damaging spell", despite having the [Attack] trait and making a spell attack roll. Despite produce flame having the same properties and being a directed attack, and the rules for attacking hazards implicitly stating that "damaging spells" and "attacks" are not the same thing. Looks like a little bit of inconsistency, perhaps indicative of when specific rules and terms were creative.)
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There may be more rules that are relevant to the discussion, but if so, I'm not sure which. Even if there are, though, this feels like a reasonably thorough examination, enough to draw conclusions from. And my personal conclusion is this:
Being able to attack objects was originally part of PF2's design, when it was initially conceived. Along the way, they realised that sundering is inherently more crippling to the players than it can ever be to both enemies and NPCs, and rewrote things to write it out. The rules for item HP, Hardness, and the like are remnants of this; they're the sole remaining evidence of unfinished, dummied-out content that was mainly left in either because Shield Block already used it, or just in case they found another use for it (such as, say, Shield Block); the intended replacement is probably Force Open and similar mechanics, that use skill checks and are mainly meant to be used by the PCs specifically.
The item damage system isn't all bad, all things said, but it does have a few notable flaws. Most pointedly, barring certain exceptions (mostly vehicles & hazards), items do not have a listed AC. Depending on how we interpret this, it either means that they cannot be targeted by anything that makes an attack roll without explicit GM permission, or that they effectively have AC 5 (default 10 AC, -5 Dex adjustment for being immobile), neither of which is especially viable in-system. Adding in proper AC values would make targeting objects both workable and not a crit-fest, or even just assuming automatic hits (but no crits) outside of combat.
But as written, the item damage system is a contradictory mess, at least when used with the intent of actually attacking objects. Paizo didn't want to risk players' precious inventories being ruined, which is a valid concern with how integral items are to the game's math, so they basically hotpatched the game to turn targeting items off. "Target 1 creature" is relevant because of this, more than anything else.
...That said, does it harm anything to turn it back on? Not really, no. As long as the GM isn't intentionally trying to sunder your gear, and you aren't intentionally trying to sunder other peoples' gear, letting things like Strikes and the errata'd spells target objects is perfectly fine, and won't cause significant harm to the game; if anything, it can make it more dynamic, since now you can bust walls and have another option for unlocking doors (at the cost of letting everyone on the other side know you're there, potentially costing you an opportunity to ambush them). It does mean a bit more work for the GM, since they have to figure out how to handle the lack of AC, but apart from that it should be fine as long as everyone is respectful.
(Assuming base CRB & GMG, for ease of reference. I assumed it was miscommunication, but further examination suggests I was wrong.)
Out of curiosity, what would a party that doesn't cover the four roles look like?
It'll look like any party. Your roles are either not really important or non existent at all.
For example, you have the "Frontliner/Tank" role. Let's take a party of Champion, Wizard, Sorcerer, Witch. The "Frontliner/Tank" role is covered by the Champion. Still, the party is fragile as hell and will surely get TPKed quickly because of a lack of tankyness. How is that possible? Because tankyness is not a role, it's a party characteristic. It's the sum of all the party member tankyness that makes the party tankyness, not the tankyness of a dedicated "Frontliner/Tank".
Skill Monkey is no role. It's very easy to be maxed in a skill and very hard to push beyond that. The only important thing is: Does your party cover all skills? If yes, then you don't need to think about skill monkeyness. And a 4-man party can cover all skills fine.
Support looks like healing to me. It's a bad role. Dedicated healers are a burden, it's better to have a few emergency healers. And emergency healing is cheap so multiple characters should have it in your party.
Nuker/Mage is not necessary. Martial oriented parties fare well without much AoE damage.
PF2 is not an MMO where roles are super strong. In WoW, if I was yawning for 3 seconds with my healer or tank we were all back to spawn point. That's not the case at all in PF2 where characters are all supposed to cover a lot of different abilities. If the Fighter is incapacitated, someone else will take the "Frontliner/Tank" role, including casters who can be quite tanky.
Eh, not really. A party without frontliners has a grand total of zero people on the front line, by definition. No Fighters, no Barbarians, no Champions, no Monks, no Swashbucklers, no nothin'. ;P It lacks both tankiness and martial damage output. This role is admittedly PF2's favourite by a wide margin; it blends basically everything with martials when it thinks it can get away with it, and kinda ends up just marrying the front line with anything else you can think of. But the role still exists, and is even stronger than ever!
The skillmonkey is an evolution of the "specialist" character type, translated into TTRPGs; it is a bit redundant in PF2, specifically, but the role still exists in a sense. In PF2, it mainly takes the form of a character who has enough free space to grab all the unusual skill feats the party might want, specialise in the skills most people don't have a particular need to bother with, or just plain fill in party skill coverage gaps in general; as such, it typically gets blended into secondary damage characters, Cha specialists, or Int specialists (for knowledge monkeying specifically). (That said, this is the weakest of the four archetypal roles in and of itself, so it tends to get folded into other classes. The most popular iterations are the Rogue, who showcases their technical prowess by hitting pressure points for massive damage and slipping around the battlefield unnoticed, and the Bard, on the grounds of picking up a smattering of weird "unrelated" skills to support their minstrel performances.) This role... honestly mainly exists as a testament to 3.5e/PF1's popularity, mainly, since it exists more because of them than because of any need in more recent systems; even then, though, it lives on because it's bolted onto the ever-popular Rogue by cultural osmosis.
Support includes healing, but saying it's just healing would undersell it by a significant margin. It includes healing, buffing (remember, the Bard is so potent because of its support), and more generally, any ability that's meant to aid your party in some way. This can even include certain martial builds; notably, Trip specialists like the Reflective Ripple Stance Monk are a blend of frontline and support, on the grounds of supplying flat-footed/off-guard to help their allies land hits.
The nuker/mage is an interesting one in PF2, I'll give you that, and one the game is kinda unfriendly to at that. They're most archetypally a wizard specifically, to the point where it's sometimes hard to tell whether the role is "caster with wizard clothing" or "nuker/AoE/mezzer/debuffer/etc.", but this isn't a hard requirement; it's an association caused by most versions of D&D (and PF1) operating on a magic-can-do-everything paradigm. The term "nuker" refers to a heavy-hitting DPS character that lives on the back lines and depends on the frontline for defense, and the term "mage" is a catch-all for AoEs, anti-support, mezzing, a bit of support, and even actual mages (in general). (It usually refers specifically to blaster mages or crowd control specifically, but it's a weirdly flexible role, especially with PF2 putting a lot of its crowd control options in skill feats. Heck, there are even Swashbuckler builds that fit it. xD)
For your example party specifically, the Champion is a frontliner, so it definitely covers one of the four roles. But, to sum up your description, the party covers one role and ignores the others, and also falls apart because it's a bad composition. That kinda doesn't prove that the roles are bad or non-existent; it proves that not using them causes problems. ;P (For reference, adding a support would increase the party's overall tankiness with buffs, and use heals to keep the Champion up. Having one of the casters act as an archetypal "mage" would allow them to supply debuffs, decreasing the opposition's offensive output and making the party tankier by extension. And adding a dedicated skillmonkey wouldn't help out directly, but it would mean another burst damager to pick off enemies (if Rogue/Investigator) or support to make everyone else better at fighting (if Bard), which would indirectly increase the party's survival.) Your Champion/Wizard/Sorcerer/Witch party isn't super-fragile because of the archetypal roles; it's super-fragile because it ignores them.
Also, as a reminder, they're not "my" roles; they're extremely popular in gaming as a whole, in large part thanks to D&D. They're not a thing that I came up with out of nowhere, they're not a thing Kaspyr came up with out of nowhere, they're not some new invention in general; they've been around since at least 3e, probably even as far back as 1e, and are easily at least 20-30 years old by this point. They're also not non-existent, even if PF2 shuffles them up a bit: They're a part of gaming culture as a whole (and players bring them to PF2 as a result of that), and multiple PF2 classes are built with those roles in mind. Most relevantly, the Fighter (and Champion), Rogue (and Investigator), Cleric (and Bard), and Wizard (and Witch) are explicitly built with the four archetypal roles in mind: The fighter is built to live on the front line, the Rogue gets skill increases & feats at every level specifically because Paizo knows people will build them as skill specialists, the Cleric gets free healing so they can spend their spells on actually interesting support, and the Wizard is meant to be flexible enough to cover whichver of the typical "mage" tasks you build for. (Sorry, Wizard.)
The roles may not be as crucial in PF2 as they are in some other games, but that's a testament to its design; most classes blend at least two roles inherently and/or can pivot into other roles depending on how you build them, so it can support more flexible party compositions by splitting the roles up among them. (The most notable example being how PF2 was designed to split the skillmonkey role among all four party members, so your party adds up to a Frankenstein's Skillmoney instead of needing a single dedicated skill specialist; if everyone does a quarter of the monkeying around, then everyone can engage in non-combat gameplay. And even then, they still went out of their way to make the Rogue chassis an explicit skillmonkey.)
Thanks for the correction, Karneios.:
Karneios wrote:
Omega Metroid wrote:
Bluemagetim wrote:
Wounded tells you here when you will actually add your wounded value to your dying value. It happens when you gain the dying condition.
It doesn't happen any other time. So when you increase your already existing dying condition you are not gaining it.
That's the old rule, yes. From what I understand, though, the Remastered version of that same rule (the Wounded entry, in the conditions list) actually stated that you add your Wounded value when you "gain or increase" the Dying condition, not just when you "gain" it like we're used to. This specific text change is the reason people are talking about adding Wounded again every time you get Dying from any source (hitting 0 HP, being damaged at 0 HP, failing a recovery check, etc.), not the wonky text in the Recovery Check section.
They did not update the wounded trait to say gain or increase, it said that in the playtest and that's it, player core wounded still just says gain
Ah, I see, my mistake. I don't have a copy of the Remaster yet, so I was probably thinking of what Seifter said the rules were supposedly always intended to be, and the supposed (yet never errata'd) "mistake" of it being "gain" when it was supposed to be "gain or increase". Must've mixed that up with what people said the actual text is, thanks for the clarification.
[I'm of the personal belief that this is some sort of intended dispute, and that some of the people who worked on the rules intended for "gain", while others intended for "gain or increase". I guess only time will tell, eh?]
[Note: In case of multi-role classes, I placed them in the first role that applies. We're mainly concerned with determining which classes cannot be placed within any of these roles, after all. Medicine skill specifically is worth calling out, since any character that specialises in it fits the support/healer role. I'm not familiar enough with the last three to know where they fit, though I believe Kineticist can fit in (at minimum) the frontliner and support roles?]
If we omit the big four, then a party is going to look really weird, with or without letting an emergency healer (healer/support role) sneak in. I'm actually really curious what sort of playstyle your group would have, have you tried it in any actual campaigns yet?...
Why Bard and Battle Oracle not in Tank role?
Because I forgot about Warrior Bard, and don't have much experience with Battle Oracles, more than anything else. My bad.
Discussions collapsed to minimise thread disruption. Sorry for the delayed replies.
Also if it was possible to gain wounded when taking damage while dying it would have most definitely been included in the Wounded description as a botmal way you can gain or increase your wounded value.
This, I am confused about entirely.
I haven't heard anyone claiming that you increased your Wounded value when you take damage while dying.
The rule that people are arguing against is that you increase your Dying value by 1 + Wounded value when you fail a recovery check or when you take damage while dying.
Previously the generally accepted ruling was that when you fail a recovery check or take damage while dying you would only increase your Dying value by 1. Wounded didn't apply. Wounded only applied when you first went to 0 HP again when you had the Wounded condition. At that point you would add your Wounded value to the Dying value that you gain from dropping.
It was always a bit ambiguous because that reminder in the Taking Damage while Dying rule has always been there. And some other rules reminder places included wording that Wounded added to Dying when Dying increases.
Basically, it goes back to the whole "gain or increase" thing. The game considers gaining Dying and increasing Dying to be different things, which leads to two options.
• If you add Wounded when gaining Dying, then Wounded is applied when a character hits 0 HP, but not when that character's Dying value would go up after that. Wounded acts as a floor; if a character hits 0 HP, they gain "1 + Wounded" Dying. (They do not apply Wounded again when failing a recovery check or taking damage, because that is considered an "increase".)
• If you add Wounded when gaining or increasing Dying, then Wounded is applied when a character hits 0 HP, and also whenever that character's Dying value would be increased in any way. Any source of Dying explicitly adds "X + Wounded" Dying, regardless of whether the character does or doesn't already have a Dying value. (They apply Wounded again when failing a recovery check or taking damage, because both increase Dying.)
Basically, most people used to use the first version, but now Paizo is trying to clarify/change (it's unclear which, since different parts of the rules text assumed different versions) the rules to the second version. Most of the focus is on recovery checks, but "gain or increase" terminology also applies Wounded when you take damage while already Dying.
Notably, this is also why people have made a big deal of persistent damage being more potent now, because a character with any Wounded value would die instantly if they take persistent damage while Dying. (More specifically, if a character has Wounded and then gains Dying, they are at Dying 2, minimum. When persistent damage ticks, the character takes damage and increases their Dying value by 1... but also applies Wounded to that increase, which places them at Dying 4 and kills them instantly.)
Regarding the archetypal Fighter/Cleric/Wizard/Rogue, they're archetypal because they're the party people think of when they think of tabletop gaming as a whole. They're not particularly squishy, if built right; a bit squishier than they'd be in the rest of the D&D/PF family, thanks to PF2 Cleric not being as durable as the norm, but otherwise on par with most 4-person parties that don't just throw a pile of Champions at everything.
They're a good balancing point because of outside expectations, more than anything else, and because they're the simplest party that cover the big four roles (frontliner, white mage, black mage, skillmonkey); they're not as bulky as an ideal PF2 party, but they're also a lineup that the game can't ignore. Something being overly problematic for them can be a good indicator of it potentially needing to be retuned, as a result.
The Raven Black wrote:
Omega Metroid wrote:
IMO, it's telling that prior to the remaster, the "intended" Dying/Wounded rules could only be found on optional secondary content, that is neither required to play nor expected to grace every table, while the "unintended" rules were front and centre in all core material.
Not quite. We had this in the CRB according to AoN :
"Taking Damage while Dying
Source Core Rulebook pg. 459 4.0
If you take damage while you already have the dying condition, increase your dying condition value by 1, or by 2 if the damage came from an attacker’s critical hit or your own critical failure. If you have the wounded condition, remember to add the value of your wounded condition to your dying value."
When it was debated on the Rules forum prior to Remaster, the boards' consensus was that it did not apply : either a typo or a reminder of what happens when you first go to Dying.
Looks like we were wrong.
Oh, good call, I completely forgot about that. I think I filed it away as a misplaced (original, as played) Wounded rule reminder; just another editing error, in the same vein as convincing fakes & dodge trap(1) from PF1.
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1: Fake Traps:
"Convincing fakes" and "dodge trap" are a pair of Rogue talents mentioned in the PF1 APG, as suggested talents for the Cat Burglar (a Catfolk racial Rogue archetype). Unfortunately, there are no Rogue talents by either of those names, and the book was (to my knowledge) never errata'd to rename them.
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Bluemagetim wrote:
Actually looking at Orc heritage feats you think they made the dying rule changes to give the racial traits of the Orc a buff?
If so, then it would effectively be a case of nerfing every other race to make Orcs stronger by comparison, which is basically the opposite of what you want to do. So I certainly hope that's not the case! xD
Hmm... after looking at it, I think the ideal solution might be to provide both sets of rules, and state upfront that each group should choose which ruleset to use depending on how lethal they want the game to be. There's no real reason they can't coexist.
The old version is very much the de facto primary ruling at this point, so it would make sense to keep it as an officially supported variant rule; if a significant portion of your community is going to house rule it right back in, then it'd be polite to save them the trouble. Would also help ease new players into the game, if they're not used to tactical play and keep getting steamrolled; they likely wouldn't have enough experience to know how to house rule it, after all.
This would also make it easier to ease PFS into the new rule if desired, and add another lever for adventure/campaign difficulty tuning. If an AP is intended to be deadly right from the start, it can instruct the GM to use the "Severe" dying rules, or if it's meant to be more of a romp, it can instruct them to use the "Relaxed" rules instead. It could also bring up the possibility of different encounters using different rules to help them stand out from the rest of the module, or make it easier for the GM to dynamically adjust the difficulty to match their group, too. I really think just keeping both would be the best solution here.
Deriven Firelion wrote:
I still do not believe the designers intended the wounding effect to act as a multiplier every time dying increases. I guess we'll see if they answer that question clearly at some point.
Going to have to agree with you on that one. The CRB is on its fourth printing, that's three reprints and a ton of errata that very noticeably did not "clarify" the wording. If adding Wounded was intended whenever you increase Dying, after all, then it likely would've been prudent to at least mention it in the recovery check rules, right? Add onto this indications that Jason Bulmahn (a big Paizo name a lot of people here are probably familiar with) expected it to work the "old way", and it seems a lot like we might be looking at some sort of internal disagreement.
IMO, it's telling that prior to the remaster, the "intended" Dying/Wounded rules could only be found on optional secondary content, that is neither required to play nor expected to grace every table, while the "unintended" rules were front and centre in all core material. There was a push to change the rules, but the change couldn't amass enough support to oust the official content; perhaps it was the old problem of different groups not communicating with each other (and thus working under different expectations and with different rulesets), or possibly someone attempting to sneakily get people to think it was the original rule. Or perhaps something else altogether. But whatever was behind it, we can tell that the push couldn't gather enough support until now.
It's fine if they want to change it, but just be honest about it. The evidence suggests that it's a new change and not the original intent, so just be open and say it's a change. Be open to receiving criticism, and to modifying it if needed. Just don't use the remaster as an excuse to force it without testing under the justification that you only just realised things weren't working as intended; that sort of statement frames the change in a more negative light from the start, because it implicitly accuses the entire community of "doing it wrong", so to speak.
Hmm... maybe the person/people who came up with the Dying/Wounded system intended for Wounded to apply whenever you gain/increase Dying, but the head honchos thought that was too potent and toned it down? Just a random guess.
That is a concern, yeah. Even though it's the weakest stat in and of itself, that doesn't mean Cha isn't at risk of becoming OP if they add too many riders to it. It can be surprisingly easy to swing too far in the other direction when you're compensating for something that was designed to be inherently weaker, after all. I'd like to see something that uses Con, and Str or Dex/Wis classes could be fun options in, say, a Tian Xia book (samurai, ninja, all those fun foreign options people tend to gravitate to).
aobst128 wrote:
Charisma has the most straightforward combat functionality among the mental stats with demoralize and bon mot both of which will give out penalties to saving throws.
That's true, yeah. That's part of what I meant by "the systems bolted on", though, since it comes from a skill and isn't intrinsic to the Cha ability itself. Charisma's the only stat that doesn't have specific effects tied to the ability itself (as listed on CRB pg.19, and in most other d20 family games), and as a result is the easiest stat to tie mechanical subsystems like skills to.
I'd guess it's likely that part of it is that Cha is always the "weird" stat in the family, and the one that's usually least integrated with core mechanics. Str affects damage & encumbrance, Dex affects defense & saves, Con is HP & saves, Int ties into language & proficiency count, and Wis does initiative & saves, but IIRC, Cha really only does innate casting (which itself is only relevant to some characters). They all have other effects outside of the game's chassis (from things such as, e.g., skills or casting), but Cha in particular tends to get most of its bolstering from the systems bolted on rather than from the game's underlying mechanics themselves.
This leaves Cha the easiest stat to balance a class around, since all classes must assume an 18 in their key stat. Str key classes will have high damage, Dex key will be hard to hit, Con key can tank a ton of damage, Int key is automatically a backup skillmonkey, and Wis key defuses a lot of nasty situations, but Cha key isn't intrinsically better in any one area regardless of class design. This makes it easiest to balance a class around Cha, and also gives them the most room for a higher power level (since the stat itself is on a lower power level than the other five stats).
Weapon Trick only needs to be taken once, and works with everything for which you meet the prerequisites. Because taking Weapon Trick for TWF and again for Weapon & Shield is just stupid.
All of your races' Racial Feats are given as bonus feats as soon as you meet their prerequisites. Because spending your limited feats to just be yourself is also stupid.
I definitely like the first one here...
...But the second feels like it should be "You have the option of taking any or all of your race's Racial Feats as bonus feats as soon as you meet the prerequisites," because they aren't always appropriate for all characters. (E.g., for Catfolk, Black Cat automatically makes their fur black, Catfolk Exemplar is explicitly "you're more catlike than most Catfolk" (and would they get it once, or all three times?). And for Tengu, Long-Nose Form feels like it's something the player would want to choose rather than have forced on them. ...And Kitsune exists, and really likes your idea, which is a vote both for and against it. xD)
1) Succor mystery Oracle. Buffs & debuffs, with a bit of healing.
2) Oracle with Haunted curse, except it's actually balanced now.
3) Oracle with mystery decoupled from curse.
4) Dawnflower Dervish Bard.
5) Simple-spell Magus. Gets a lot of low-level utility spells, but can heighten them to increase their potency regardless of heightening rules (to allow, e.g., low-level Incapacitation spells to still be useful at higher levels).
6) An actual gish Bard.
7) A Muscle Wizard, who embues their body with magic to function like a monk. Could be either Wizard or Magus, and has more of a focus on utility than on power; casts with Str instead of Int, so maybe should have caster weapon progression.
An easy rule of thumb is that if your opinion of a spell is, "I'd love to have this, but I'm a spontaneous caster," then it might be worth considering a wand. Especially if it's something that fits your mental image of the class or character perfectly, but isn't going to come up often enough to justify having it in a repertoire or preparing on the average day, such as, e.g., restyle for a Bard.
The +1 to 3 are fine it's the striking runes I object to, no one would choose not have that 1 to 3 bonus given the tight maths of 2e so making the entire damage scaling based on magic items feels excessive.
The main point of contention is whether the math should depend on fundamental runes, really. It currently does, for better or for worse, so no one can contest that choosing not to use them is a bad idea. The issue is more about whether people should have to "choose" to buy their actual intended power progression or not, and whether literally turning the ability to keep up with on-level challenges into a treasure tax to make players feel more powerful was a good idea.
Temperans wrote:
Omega Metroid wrote:
Hmm...
I agree with you with most of it.
The one thing I disagree with is that most players are weird and if the items doesn't help them attack/defend better they will ignore the item unless going for a specific build.
Just look at how no one talks about the cool non-combat items except when someone finds out about it. For example: Did you know that there is a PFS item from PF1 that 1/day gave Tiny Hut along with effectively infinite supply of writing equipment? I only found out about it this year and people rarely talk about it. The item was released in 2011.
In PF2 you can just use Wand of Cozy Cabin and supply your own paper/ink. But again no one talks about it.
That is strange, yeah, but understandable. I half think it's a subtle form of conditioning that previous versions have developed over the years, where the big six have given the impression that anything that doesn't give you +X to whatever is weak and doesn't improve your character by definition, combined with many players' tendency to focus on combat specifically when optimising.
Like Deriven pointed out, most players feel like items that don't up the numbers on their sheets don't actually make them more powerful, likely thanks to a long-standing history of magic items making players more powerful by upping their numbers. Personally, I consider "you get +X to some stat or other" to be the worst, and least interesting, type of magic item that could ever possibly exist. Like you, I'd much rather see something that increases my power level by, y'know, actually giving me a new power, and honestly find it really weird that a lot of people don't share that sentiment.
Hmm... One semi-fix that comes to mind is conditional bonuses, but they'll just encourage specific playstyles and/or feel weak compared to generic math fixers. They could have their conditions tailored to individual characters' playstyles, but then they essentially become always-on fixers, so why even bother making them conditional to begin with. Some video games solve it by giving you equipment that gives you a new skill or spell when equipped, which is a viable way to approach it; a magic sword that can cast fireball once per day, using your class DC, would be a nifty find (and a good power boost early on, at that), for instance, as would the item and wand you mentioned. Similarly, a dawnflower sash, merform belt, or cape of effulgent escape would be a nice find that clearly increases your power level... but nope, they compete with the big six! Magic items, and player desire for them, thus fall into the trap of requiring a numerical bonus to feel like they do something, to the point that even a mechanically superior item would feel "useless" compared to something that just gives you a +1. And this in turn leads to magic items being designed with upping the math in mind, which in turn leads to them being turned into math fixers that the game's balancing outright depends on, in turn feeding a toxic environment where anything that competes with a math fixer is automatically bad, which leaves math fixers feeling like the only magic items that actually matter, and thus leads devs to focus on math fixers if they want magic items to be relevant, which leads to anything competing with the math fixers being bad in comparison, in a vicious cycle that constantly tears itself apart but never truly goes away, and slowly seeps out into other games (by making players expect the math fixer cycle, and thus feel like any game that doesn't use math fixers just makes magic items useless)...
I think the only way it'll change is if more people realise that the only reason math fixers feel good is because they were built into the system's math specifically to appease players that felt like anything that isn't a math fixer is bad.
Hmm... thinking about it, the issue is that magic items, especially the math fixers/big 6/etc. that any given system might have, tend to be incorporated in a way that makes them overcentralising. Either the math explicitly requires them and you fall behind if you don't have them, or the math doesn't absolutely require them but noticeably rewards you for having them (and thus makes you feel like you fall behind if you don't have them, even though you actually don't). Players want them to feel like they're meaningful (easiest way is to build them in as math fixers), but also want them to feel like they're interesting (which math fixers ultimately aren't, though making math fixers the key for weapon properties/runes is a good way to solve that).
Conversely, if they don't fall into one of those categories, they just plain don't feel important enough to most people (like a lot of 5e's magic items), break the math when players get them but GMs don't take them into account (like a lot of 5e's magic items), or are awkward enough that the easiest way to handle them is to just ignore them entirely (like a lot of 5e's magic items). This significantly limits the amount of design room available, especially if they also have to compete with something more general and/or especially useful (such as, e.g., a speed or Medicine bonus).
I'm starting to think that 5e could've had the best implementation of magic items, in theory... but completely squandered the opportunity, and just made a mess of it as a result. PF2 comes close, but typically makes the main draw into a rider on a math fixer, rather than a standalone item.
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Honestly, I've been thinking that the best way to implement magic items might be as special properties/runes, which can either come attached to a specific item or just be on a runestone in the middle of a loot pile. Instead of designing the math to require magic items to keep up (so that players feel like their items are important), use the items to actually expand their functionality. 5e tried to do this, but flubbed it; it barely supplies any basic properties, and when it gives you, e.g., a neat weapon with a fun new function on it, that weapon typically has a numerical bonus that wasn'the game wasn't balanced around. PF2 does it better, in that the numerical bonuses are factored into balance... but goes too far for some players, using items as math fixers with fun riders (even runes are just riders, really; specifically, the rider is "you also get a rune slot"). Either way, the math makes them feel awkward, which makes me think it may be the weakest link. Goodbye!
It leaves me feeling like the key may be to focus on magic items giving extra abilities that expand on the character's "core" functionality, that are fun to use but don't significantly alter the math. Use the items to widen your skillset instead of adding more depth to a pre-existing ability. They need to enable something that characters can't do without magic items, so that they feel important, but shouldn't be blanket modifiers to difficulty or math, so they don't feel like checking off a box; the ideal is enabling new tactics that reward canny players for finding synergistic interactions, but still work just fine even if you don't specifically look for synergies.
[And also, as a note, I do think math adjustments are fine if they're for specific use cases, but blanket adjustments just turn into the sort of math fixers that lead to this very discussion, mainly because they have different psychological implications; a +1 when using Arcana to juggle buffalo with your mind encourages crazy new tactics, but a +1 to Arcana in general with a "you can also juggle buffalo for 10 minutes a day" Activate (Interact) effect is just a weird niche item that people will probably wear for the math bonus, but never actually use the effect.]
Something like, e.g., extending handwraps of mighty blows. It's not all that much of a difference, but being able to punch someone on the other side of the map like Piccolo or Luffy significantly changes the feel of a martial artist. Or maybe a pair of gloves that let you use Acrobatics to try to move faster when making a 90-degree turn, by adhering to a surface so you can slingshot off it (it's a bit hard to come up with good examples on the fly this early in the morning). Or defender from 5e, a generic sword property that lets you move the sword's attack bonus to AC instead (implying that it helps you parry; this one is admittedly subject to 5e's magic weapon bonus woes, but the idea of making Combat Expertise into a weapon property has a lot more potential than making it a feat). Or, hell, even just returning or flaming weapons in general, or an eyepiece that lets you diagnose curses or magical ailments that would normally be invisible visually (and maybe gives you a Medicine bonus when doing so).
Those are just a few examples (and an example of how 5e had the right thought but flubbed the implementation), but the idea is there. Rather than just fix the math and add a special use case rider, design the math to stand by itself, and make magic items that enable special uses you wouldn't normally be able to do (possibly, but not necessarily, with a math bonus for those special use cases alone, depending on the item and use case). The use cases need to be interesting, they need to be something that can change the way you play your character, and they should ideally be something that's flat-out impossible (or signicantly more difficult) without the magic item, so that they feel like they make a big difference. If done well, this would even help keep them exciting without forcing or encouraging players to focus on the almighty +1s first and everything else last.
(...That said, if something like this was the norm, I'm not sure how it would be able to accomodate the players that do get excited over flat numerical increases, without turning into another Big Six fiasco.)
That's fair, Darksol, I was mainly looking at it in context of the thread's OP's original wording there, and as such, pointing out that if the familiar's "hands" no longer allow anything that requires opposable thumbs, then the clarification contradicts RAW. ;3 (And I was looking at hands vs. paws, not at digit loss. A hand that lost its thumb still has the bone structure for an opposable thumb, after all.)
And that's true, Temperans. There, I was just pointing out that a familiar that's able to fly isn't automatically always flying, and giving an example of how a familiar with Flier could potentially scout out an area inconspicuously.
It's not a new ruling, meaning they've never changed Familiars, merely your perception of them has. You can't have Familiars using items or making attacks. This was always intended.
It can use up to two of its limbs as if they were hands to perform manipulate actions.
Hands include opposable thumbs, therefore Manual Dexterity originally allowed you to do anything which requires thumbs. If this is no longer the case, then it is indeed a new ruling, one which contradicts RAW at that.
Further, if Manual Dexterity no longer allows a familiar to act as if they have opposable thumbs, then Master's Form now contains a logical problem:
Quote:
Your familiar can change shape as a single action, transforming into a humanoid of your ancestry with the same age, gender, and build of its true form, though it always maintains a clearly unnatural remnant of its nature, such as a cat's eyes or a serpent's tongue. This form is always the same each time it uses this ability. This otherwise uses the effects of humanoid form, except the change is purely cosmetic. It only appears humanoid and gains no new capabilities. Your familiar must have the manual dexterity and speech abilities to select this.
When your familiar uses this ability, they take on a humanoid form (which, by definition, means they gain opposable thumbs if they didn't already have any). ...But, they also "gain no new capabilities." Put together, if Manual Dexterity doesn't allow them to act as if they have opposable thumbs, then this doesn't either. Which means that they gain thumbs, but are unable to use them.
I... don't think this is the intent here, or at least I hope it's not. ;P
Guntermench wrote:
Unless you for some reason decide your familiar doesn't like you and thus doesn't listen.
Charizard is Ash's familiar.
graystone wrote:
*shrug* You're missing the point: it's not the amount of the impact but WHO is having the impact. PF2 focuses on the CHARACTER having it, not his pet.
If the familiar is obtained through a feat that the character took, then the familiar is one of the character's features, on the grounds that feats are character features. This is roughly akin to, e.g., arguing that Quick Bomber is a problem because it's the bombs having the impact, not the Alchemist. ;3 Guess we need to fix all those feats that involve weapons, items, armour, and anything else that isn't a part of the PC's biology, too, then! And animal companions, of course, since they're definitely not part of the character! ^_^
(For the record, I see your point, and would sometimes agree from a role-playing perspective; there are a few cases where a "familiar" is just a manifestation of part of a character's personality, and thus part of them, but it's not the norm. Gameplay-wise, though, anything that a character spends one or more feat slots to purchase, and/or gets as a class/ancestry/background/archetype/etc. feature, counts as a part of that character as far as character design mechanics are concerned, IMO.)
graystone wrote:
Ravingdork wrote:
What exactly stops a familiar without Independent from using Stealth?
Well, I'd expect a lot of people would make it a LOT easier to figure out where the familiar was when you are there telling them where to go: Command "you issue a verbal command as a single action with the auditory and concentrate trait". So if your familiar becomes hidden when others are around, it's not hard to figure out where they are when you're telling them to hide and move 10' forward.
Amusingly enough, the best way to handle this may be to use plan/maneuver/code names. Anyone can tell where the familiar is if you tell it to "sneak up on the enemy commander!"... but not so much when you say it's, "Time for plan 216-A!"
Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
That's a fair point, but if the situation comes up, I really should not have to ask my player in the middle of an encounter "How is your Familiar flying, does it have wings or is it just magically floating around?" It can create metagaming, where it might say it has wings where we never really, you know, defined how it's flying, especially if it's in a context like this one.
Note that Flier just gives the familiar a fly speed, it doesn't mandate that they must always fly at all times. Even if I had a wingless flying cat as a familiar, if I wanted it to go scouting, I'd probably tell it to act like an escaped domestic in search of food, walking around and checking near the mess hall. Maybe meow at anyone it sees eating and rub up against their leg, something like that. It can come back once it's full, or if no one feeds it, and it wouldn't seem out of the ordinary for a hungry housecat to find someone to cater to it unless they're in an area that doesn't normally have any cats or pet owners.
Ravingdork wrote:
How do you rationalize a fireball burning a familiar inside a backpack to death, but not dealing a single point of damage to the backpack surrounding it?
"Today, Billy learned that 'fireproof' does not mean 'heatproof'." ;3
IMO, it makes no sense that attempting to help someone with a task would be harder than the task itself. And then at higher levels, it makes no sense that it would be just as easy/hard to help someone build a shed as perform brain surgery.
As any "family techie" can tell you, helping someone with a task being harder than doing the task yourself makes perfect sense if the person you're helping doesn't know what they're doing.
Personally, I think what's going on is that the static difficulty represents how skilled the character is at helping others without coming across as a snitty know-it-all, just taking over entirely, or annoying them until they reject your help. It's less about the task itself, and more about your ability to cooperate with the person you're aiding, I would say.
Does seem a bit weird for that to be enforced mechanically, but it seems there's a logic to it. ;P
Generally, I would say that Swashbuckler won't compete with the heavy hitters damage-wise, but also that it shouldn't be expected to. Rather, though it falls behind them in the DPR race, it provides the benefit of multiple roles in a single package, making it a weirdly flexible support martial. I'd actually say it's closer to a martial counterpart to the Bard than anything else.
The key to using one effectively seems to be stylistically supporting your party, with the flexibility to fill whatever role they need on any given turn. A lot of thought goes into when and how to use panache, and when to hang onto it to increase your success rates at other actions; I'd say that most styles can benefit from the Swashy holding panache for Derring-Do, goading enemies into attacking so they can punish the fools with style, and dropping a Finisher whenever it'll finish her target off.
The thing that matters most is learning when to do what, really. Battledancer wants to fascinate troublemakers before their turn, to protect their squishier allies, but their real support silliness comes online when they get Leading Dance and can basically take over enemy placement for the GM (slight exaggeration ;3); they also synergise nicely with defensive builds, due to the fascination. Wits can debuff their target for the mage and easily Aid their friends, increasing the entire party's effectiveness. And so on, it's not that hard to see how the other styles can support the team. This has the unfortunate effect of making their relative performance hard to gauge, though, since "their" effect tends to be spread out as a non-standard party buff.
Not necessarily high support, Squiggit, just more built-in support & role flexibility than most classes, and support that synergises with and ties into their other roles.
Battledancer, for example, offers an innate fascination option which, while admittedly is [incapacitation] during combat and thus not always that great, allows them to gain panache by debuffing a mook (on a success, with Focused Fascination); their best support option is their battlefield control feat, Leading Dance (thematically tied to them, and refreshes Battledancer panache): If successful, it eats one of the target's actions or keeps them from focusing on easier targets (if you move them away from squishy friends), possibly setting the target up for further debuffs (if they roll with it and decide to just take you out first, putting them at risk of missing and being disarmed), and/or effectively gives one or more allies an extra action (since they won't need to Step away if you move the target away, or won't need to Stride to a better vantage point if you shove the target into their face); the latter option also helps you set up flanking, as well. Other styles are similar, in that they tend to open up options that give you neat support if used well, and/or help you control enemies (or penalise them if they disobey you).
It's not that they're amazing supporters, really, as much as it is that they're very flexible for a martial. They can be pretty durable (allowing them to help with tanking, which in turn lets them debuff enemies), they can put out decent damage (their consistent DPR isn't as high as other martials, but it's not that shabby either, and their burst can be pretty big), they can provide skill support that synergises with their combat options (they're rewarded by gaining panache, which in turn enables their burst), and they can offer field control support that tends to help their allies' action economy/increase ally damage/save wounded allies. They're not as good at any of these things as a dedicated specialist; rather, what they're good at is combining them. They can mix & match as needed to help compensate for the party's weaknesses and capitalise on their strengths, if used well. It does tend to take a good deal of thought to make them actually effective, though, and I'm not entirely sure whether they're balanced compared to core classes overall; I believe they are, but it's close.
Their biggest weakness, though, is that they're jacks of all trades, but masters of none. That's often better than a master of one, yes, but being in a party full of masters-of-one makes it hard for them to stand out; when everyone else is a master of one of the jack's trades, then the jack's advantage is being able to combine them in ways that the masters-of-one can't. They do worse damage than a Fighter, have worse support than a Bard, and are worse tanks than a Champion, but their tanking supports the party and their support recharges their damage, and they have a knack for isolating enemies & moving them around. This lets them flow from one role to another as needed, compared to the more static roles that other classes tend to have.
Basically, where some classes are square pegs, and some are round pegs, the Swashbuckler is a memory foam peg; you can just squeeze them into the hole, whatever shape it is.
Based on what I have heard from the design team, the core of the Pathfinder game now established. They now create materials that explore new ground and deepen various optional areas.
That said, each product usually touches on the existing classes. Certainly Secrets of Magic supported existing classes, especially with those new spells. If you want rules only from our Design Team then look to Book of the Dead next, which will no new classes. It will surely have new archetypes.
We sow seeds everywhere. There is a designer assigned to every product we make, so new options appear in the Lost Omens Setting, Adventures and Adventure Paths.
(Note, the design team considers the chose of deity to be the optimal way to flavor a Cleric over doctrine. I'd like to see a more skills-focus doctrine, but that's my opinion.)
Finally, Pathfinder Infinite and Pathfinder Compatible products are often created by experienced Pathfinder freelancers.
Pathfinder 2 is just over 2 years old. Thanks for supporting its growth.
That's good to know. Does the design team have any plans on releasing actual class feats tied to classes, too, out of curiosity? Not ones that are part of shiny new archetypes and can't be chosen any other way, but ones with actual class traits on them. Things like, e.g., new Fighter feats for the fighter that fights by jumping on his enemies, or new Druid feats for the druid that wants to wildshape into a kitten the size of New Zealand, or new Swashbuckler feats for making your enemies' knees buckle when you swash them with your buckler, or new Sorcerer feats for loading a gun with unstable magic instead of a bullet so it triggers a wellspring surge when it hits, or new Alchemist feats for that cheerful giftmaker who conveniently forgot to mention what makes those alchemical hourglasses glow in the dark?
• Damage builds are, of course, one of their main intents. They seem like they're supposed to do less damage per round than most other damagers because they have a big burst, though.
What are they bursting? They can't effectively burst anything that threatens the party and would need to get extremely lucky to drop most on-level foes with a single attack, so is bursting mooks supposed to be their job?
They'd likely be bursting the boss' mooks, or as cleanup after the heavy hitters. The Swash is really good at the former, as people have pointed out, and having the ability to output a single, heavy hit when needed can be useful if the main damager already went, but wasn't able to finish the boss off. The egotistic showboat class is one of the best killstealers, who'da thunk it. ;3
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• "Combat skillmonkey" was a reference to how Swashes have a nice selection of combat skill support, and how certain styles are rewarded for using said support. Getting panache from, e.g., Bon Mot or tripping makes it very easy to fit those actions into your combat rotation, enabling a playstyle that prioritises cleaning up after the Barbarian and then using a combat skill or two to get ready for next turn.
If you're looking for support won't a Bard always do that better while still clearing mooks with Electric Arc?
Probably not; electric arc is arcane/primal, and there are, alas, no Spell Secrets in Pathfinder. ;3 That said, though, comparing to Bard is a good counterpoint, since Swashbuckler honestly feels a lot like an attempt at a martial Bard counterpart, at least in spirit. As a martial, it's probably going to fall behind if it focuses on pure damage, but being able to blend stylish moves and witty retorts with their somewhat lesser combat abilities both allows them to compensate, and makes for a fun playstyle that lends itself to getting absorbed in your character. It... well, to be perfectly honest, Bard and Swashbuckler feel like two halves of a whole "ideal" bard class, style-wise.
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• Flexible party support builds are similar to the above, but with more of a focus on setting up better turns for the rest of the party. If you can get panache for Aiding a party member or putting the boss between you and that Fighter that's been itching for a chance to go all out, for example, then you'll be upping the party's damage considerably even if you're not a high-damage build yourself.
Are they better at this than an actual support class?
I don't think so, myself, and would honestly consider it a balance issue if they were. Pure supports tend to be on the low end of the damage scale, while swashbucklers are closer to the middle; I'd probably put them at above-average, but not enough to approach the high bar. Having support on par with pure supports, while being a noticeably better damager than they are, would just obsolete the other support classes. Swashbuckler feels like it fits comfortably in between damager and support, with special focus to its flexibility; while they're likely relatively well balanced from this perspective, it does lead to the next issue you mentioned.
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• Off-tanking was referring to how the Swash's reckless bravado has a mechanical tendency to manifest as drawing aggro and making attackers miss so you can punish them for it. It's not full-fledged tanking, for sure, since you're still not a Champion. But, despite that, it's not that hard to make a Zorro build that focuses on making a mockery of the fool that thought he could land a hit on you, then knocking the weapon out of their hands, or stabbing them in the back if they turn away (Fencer, Buckler Expertise, Dueling Parry, Goading Feint, AoO, etc., mix and match with other stuff). Makes for an interesting way to keep a dangerous foe tied up in a duel. ;3
In a party with a Champion or Tank Monk wouldn't the group be better off rounding out with a Fighter, Bard, and Cleric rather than replacing those extremely good classes with a Swashbuckler? What is a party where a Swashbuckler is the best choice to fill a slot?
This, unfortunately, is the flip side of being flexible enough to fill any opening: If there isn't an opening you need to fill, then all that flexibility won't really help you. Trading mastery of a single role for the ability to cover the party's gaps, like Swash does, has the logical issue that you have to fall behind the "masters" so you won't obsolete them.
Overall, the Swashbuckler can do a lot of things, but can't do any one of them as well as the master; rather, its strength is that it can easily mix and match multiple roles as needed. This can make it hard to fit into a standard 4-slot party, but makes it shine in a 5+-slot party (where fights are big enough that secondary role coverage becomes a lot more useful, and Swash's slightly lesser coverage of multiple roles effectively lets them function as 3-4 secondary coverage characters smushed together), in a 1/2-slot party (where its flexibility lets it cover multiple roles decently enough), or in games where the players choose classes for character instead of role (where it's easy enough for the Swashbuckler to build into whichever role the rest of the party didn't cover, without needing to sacrifice much personality to do so). It's... actually the same issue that tends to plague Bards in most video games, amusingly enough.
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dmerceless wrote:
Why should Swashbuckler need to pay for utility with damage potential when things like Intimidation/Intimidating Strike + Shatter Defenses Figther can have more utility while also being more tanky and doing more damage, and also being easier to play, build and less dependent on luck? I don't get why new classes need to he held to such low standards.
I'm not sure if it's something I agree with entirely, myself. I'm mainly just looking at what appears to be the underlying design logic, myself.
(And, as a note, Swashbuckler provides more utility than just fear and flat-footedness, so I'm not really convinced that a Fighter can provide more utility than they can. Remember, Swashes have tools for grappling, shoving, tripping, disarming, fear, flat-footedness, repositioning, fascinating, debuffing, and even drawing aggro; while it's probably not possible for any one Swashbuckler to do everything, they have a bigger toolkit to choose from than most martials. It'd be nice if that kit included more damage, for sure, but they were likely concerned that being a better damager on top of everything else would overshadow a few CRB classes.)
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dmerceless wrote:
WWHsmackdown wrote:
I assume it's because the fighter is what peak performance looks like and paizo is purposefully keeping them as a power ceiling never to be touched by another martial. Whether or not that's a satisfactory answer is up to opinion. I personally don't mind that my magus will never touch fighter levels of performance. I'm doing something different and reaching for a different class fantasy. I can make a shameless weeb character AND be designed not to steal spotlight... I'm just another dude in a party of people. Fighter is the class for "that guy". Treat it as such for the sake of power comparisons. The fighters niche as best in combat is unassailable and I imagine it's gonna remain like that for the rest of the edition. It doesn't ruffle my feathers too bad though, considering "fight" is in the name.
I'll admit that I could have explained better, but my point wasn't supposed to be specifically about Fighter. I think people overestimate how OP the Fighter is a bit. Anyway, I compared Swash to Fighter because they're both skilled warriors that can do little utility tricks, but in terms of power level you can compare the newer classes to Bard, Champion, Fighter, Rogue, or even stuff that flies more under the radar like Sorcerer or Cleric. The new classes come with tons of hoops to be jumped through and tradeoffs to be made. They need more stats than a character can reasonably invest in; if they want damage, they need to sacrifice utility, and if they want both they need to be mega squishy. Meanwhile the core classes just get to do all the stuff, do it well and with barely any tradeoffs. It just doesn't feel like they're in the same playing field at all to me.
Now that one... I'm not sure, really. My best guess would be that the CRB covers all the "simple" classes, the ones that are easy to use out of the box. Other books, since they're supplements and not the basic package that all the newbies are going to think they're supposed to start with, have more room for design complexity. This leaves them vulnerable to the complacent gamer issue (if the more complex class doesn't blow the easier class out of the water, then only people that actually like the more complex class will typically bother to learn it), and makes actual balance issues harder to spot (because you can't tell if the problem is that the class is unbalanced, or that it's being used incorrectly). Swashbuckler, being content from the very first supplement, came at a time while Paizo was still figuring out how to do this: It's definitely a sound idea, and the logic is there, but it's really hard to tell whether the implementation does everything it sets out to do, and how well what it sets out to do can stand up against the basics from the CRB.
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Overall, I think Swashbuckler is most likely relatively well-balanced as a whole, but this depends on it being used in a way that allows its flexibilty to shine; it has to be able to leverage its combination of roles to keep up, supplementing its damage with control, support, and/or tanking. If it doesn't get to do that, then it's probably going to fall behind, so it rewards playing smart and playing flashy above all else. (And even when it keeps up, a portion of "its" damage will typically come from making it easier for everyone else to deal damage, making it more difficult to track stats.)
Hmm... the thing I'm getting here is that Swashbuckler's biggest strength isn't that it's a damage class, it's that it's extremely versatile.
I'm not really sure I agree. It very much feels like a damage class and not like it's built for really all that much outside it. It's consistent with how I see most people play them too.
There are a handful of different things you can pick up depending on your Style, but I wouldn't really call the class versatile or particularly tanky.
Was mainly looking at what people have mentioned doing here in this thread, and... oh, wait, typo. "Tanky skillmonkey" was supposed to be "combat skillmonkey", that was a typo. What I was looking at was:
• Damage builds are, of course, one of their main intents. They seem like they're supposed to do less damage per round than most other damagers because they have a big burst, though.
• "Combat skillmonkey" was a reference to how Swashes have a nice selection of combat skill support, and how certain styles are rewarded for using said support. Getting panache from, e.g., Bon Mot or tripping makes it very easy to fit those actions into your combat rotation, enabling a playstyle that prioritises cleaning up after the Barbarian and then using a combat skill or two to get ready for next turn.
• Flexible party support builds are similar to the above, but with more of a focus on setting up better turns for the rest of the party. If you can get panache for Aiding a party member or putting the boss between you and that Fighter that's been itching for a chance to go all out, for example, then you'll be upping the party's damage considerably even if you're not a high-damage build yourself.
• Off-tanking was referring to how the Swash's reckless bravado has a mechanical tendency to manifest as drawing aggro and making attackers miss so you can punish them for it. It's not full-fledged tanking, for sure, since you're still not a Champion. But, despite that, it's not that hard to make a Zorro build that focuses on making a mockery of the fool that thought he could land a hit on you, then knocking the weapon out of their hands, or stabbing them in the back if they turn away (Fencer, Buckler Expertise, Dueling Parry, Goading Feint, AoO, etc., mix and match with other stuff). Makes for an interesting way to keep a dangerous foe tied up in a duel. ;3
Overall, while they can be seen as a damage class, I get the feeling that they're meant to have lower damage output than other "damagers", but compensate with strong bursts every so often, and a (more consistent) high focus on marrying skill checks and Strikes to fill any gaps in your party composition (controller, buffer, debuffer, secondary dodge-tank, etc.). Basically, they're so self-focused and egotistic that it somehow loops back around to being great team players. ;3
For comparison here, throwing together a quick bard build suggests that a Lv.2 bard will likely have around 26 HP, +5 Fort, and +7 Ref, give or take; higher Fort saves would be better for surviving this, most likely.
A wasp swarm can, with one action (DC 21 Ref save), do 2d8 damage and try to poison you. Our test bard here would need to roll nat 14 (35% chance) to hide from this, which means a 65% chance of taking ~9 damage. If he takes the damage, then he needs a nat 16 (25% chance) to avoid being poisoned (and will crit fail on nat 6 or lower), and would thus have a 75% chance of being poisoned (45% chance of stage 1, 30% chance of stage 2). The poison lasts six rounds; stage 1 is 1d6 every round, and stage 2 is 2d6 every two rounds, so it's expected to do ~21 (6d6) damage on average (1-1-1-1-1-1 or 2-0-2-0-2-0), or max out at ~24.5 (7d6) (if, e.g., you spend the first round at stage 1, then go to stage 2 and stay there, for 1-2-0-2-0-2).
Assuming a string of bad rolls (not unlikely, since they'll need to keep making Fort saves from the poison), the bard could, e.g., take 12 damage from the attack (14 HP), then fail every poison save for 4 a pop, causing them to die from just a single sting. And if they hit stage 2, they also become clumsy 2, making them easy pickings if the wasps keep going after the bard (which they probably would, because wasps are evil and full of hatred).
Hmm... the thing I'm getting here is that Swashbuckler's biggest strength isn't that it's a damage class, it's that it's extremely versatile. You can build them as a damager if you can manage to pump their Str (or if not, your damage will come online later in the game), you can go tanky skillmonkey, you can be a flexible party support, you can be an off-tank...
Perhaps the solution is to make a Cha-based damage alternative (whether simple Cha-to-damage like Thief Rogue, or something more like Investigator's Devise a Strategem) available as a class archetype, so that it can trade out features if necessary? Maybe even make an archetype for flamboyant builds in general, so Bards can get in on it too (as a way to try to get back some of the 1e gishiness they lost; actually, this could be an interesting idea for a Dawnflower Dervish or Dervish Dancer take on Battle Dance, at the cost of more selfish buffs, but that's outside the scope of this thread).
