FlashRebel's page

Ravingdork wrote:

I laugh when I hear people justifying things with RAW these days. 2nd Edition has more or less killed the concept of RAW. The new Gamemastery Guide makes it pretty clear too.

Thanks for the Jab! Appreciate it.

We also follow logical flow and common sense.

Your not a master of what your a master of is dead

A game needs clearly defined rules that every player must abide to to even be considered a game. Respecting the RAW and believing there is something wrong with the current ruleset are not incompatible points of view.

Ignoring all mechanical/numerical effects, here are some things a familiar can be used for:

Low level flying reconnaissance.

Item retrieval from hard to access places (burrow/flight).

Low risk infiltration as a species common to an area.

Non-threateningly approach and calm a frightened child.

Delight patrons at a bar while you gather info.

Keep watch.

Deliver messages to the princess who's under lock and key.

Start a fire on the other side of the castle.

Gather information from wildlife.

Gain favor with the Familiar fanatics at the wizard academy.

Signal the second team when to start the attack.

...

I mean, if your game has nothing similar to any of these, I'm glad I'm not playing in it.

Except a familiar is a minion and a minion won't do anything without being ordered constantly. Barely anything you're suggesting here is possible.

graystone wrote:

Malk_Content wrote:

I can understand some familiar being killed on recon "ah snake kill it" but most why would that happen. Like oh no your crow failed its stealth check the bandit spots it and goes "Oh a crow."

Most likely because of the guy on the ground yelling commands at it every turn

Yelling telepathically from up to a mile away. This is before we get into the fact that minion is an encounter restrictive state, though this is one of those gm fuzzy grey areas you hate so hopefully the gmg will have some words on what minions do out of combat (this my biggest bugbear with the system honestly)

This is not how empathic link works. You cannot use it to deliver a message, let alone give orders.

I honestly never want to play in game where familiars weren't useful. Sounds like a boring group.

Not everything has to have numerical values attached to be worthwhile, and the non-combat capabilities of familiars (which are changeable on a day to day basis) are significant.

In my game, familiars are extremely worthwhile. If they're not in yours, chuck it on the pile of other options that your group likely can ignore due to table variation.

What capabilities? Failing at every skill checks because of poor modifiers across the board? That's the problem: the familiar has no capabilities to speak of. Small sizes no longer having tangible benefits and the minion trait just finish to kill it.

The abilities that the familiar grant are useful, extra cantrip, spellslot, focus, alchemical reagent and quick alchemy.

They are not combat buddies, but they grant the master a lot of small advantages that you can change each day, it's basically a floating feat.

You have to recalibrate your expectations -- familiars are not assumed to be used in combat anymore, unless it's under very special circumstances. I feel their big draw are the master abilities they provide: an extra cantrip, a quickened refocus, eventually an extra low-level spell slot.

In that respect, it might be better to see them as special magic items that enhance your caster.

And regarding their defensive abilities, I feel they actually gained options; Damage Avoidance and Lifelink means they won't die to a stray cone of cold or chain lightning.

One important note: If you get a familiar, you absolutely should take Improved Familiar as soon as you can. Having only 2 daily abilities is very restrictive, 4 is much more flexible.

I never expected familiars to be combat buddies, I expected familiars to be useful at something other than staying in my pocket to passively give extra spell slots..

Flexibility is meaningless without interesting abilities in the first place. I had fun in First Edition with my hedgehog familiar, clearly the furthest thing you can have to a combat buddy considering it has no natural attack and is Diminutive, because it was an extremly good infiltrator with the magic barding I got crafted for its protection and extra bonuses to Stealth. The sage archetype was awesome, it was akin to a living library.

Their durability is also terrible, with Damage Avoidance only doing half the job Improved Evasion did and needing a famliliar ability slot, and what remains if I have to use Lifelink as well? The answer: a complete liability of a creature that does a lot of things very badly and nothing decently (even its Perception, Stealth and Acrobatics checks rapidly become laughable).

From a pure technical point of view familiars can seem a bit lackluster but lets take another look at it from an rp perspective

You already lost my interest right there.

your familiar can communicate empathically with you over a mile distance (as mentioned this they had before but I'm just considering thoughts here to see if an familiar is worth it)

since they can have their movement adjusted every day they can be spies for basically every enviroment

they can have sccent and potentially notice enemies and dangers none of the players would notice

In the same manner darkvision can be helpful

they can have speech and communicate more complex information, either after spying on someone or after moving from one part of the group to the other

and spell delivery can be very useful, either for damaging enemies or helping your allies

and if you are fine with your companion just sitting around looking cute, just pick 2 master abilities and you're golden

Some familiar abilities are a bit situational, but they can be adjusted every day and be potentially very helpful

This last bit sums up everything: it looks awesome when you see all the range of familiar abilities, then you remember that you can get 4 of them at most if you're not a specialist and this thing can die from a monster sneezing on it. If I need spying to be done, better invest training in Stealth, ability boosts in Dexterity and do it myself rather than suffer this utter piece of garbage that cannot do a single good check to save its life.

If they are worth it is up for you to decide

I decided then.

Draco18 wrote:

used to get for free

This is not the same game as Pathfinder First Edition.

How does it make the familiar less terrible for getting cornerstone abilities stripped away? Some aren't even available as familiar abilities anymore. Forget about familiars being an extension of their masters, it's not even the case anymore.

Familiars are very important to Alchemists. Nearly a feat tax to me.

Considering how alchemists are terrible in general and have no other good level 1 feat, no surprise there.

For casters, they give very nice abilities. Familiar Focus is extremely useful.

Until your focus pool grows above 1. Anyone needing this is a big user of focus spells, and as such they naturally grow out of needing such a crutch of an ability.

They also keep their function as scout if you give them flier for example.

If you consider then expandable, that is.

It's a first level feat, after all, they can't give you too many good abilities.

They give you a companion that can neither do any physical tasks not communicate with its master, and can die in any encounter. Even for 1st level feat standards, this is a trap feat.

Compared to Animal Companion, the main difference for me is that Familiars only need one feat. If you don't improve your Animal Companion, it becomes very quickly useless in combat.

Are you soure we're talking about the same thing? Familiars don't even have the option to evolve the same way a companion does. From level 1 to level 20 it remains a complete liability, above all for casters themselves ironically. Animal companions are better in nearly every aspect from the get-go except they're more specialized. Familiars aren't specialized in anything and this is why they suck.

Familiars are Swiss Army knives, plain and simple. The breadth of possibility for one feat is impressive.

Familiars are not Bowie knives. They can’t do the heavy lifting work.

I think familiars suffer most when looked at from a raw power perspective. Can a familiar help you take down a Minotaur faster/better/stronger? No. It’s not a Bowie knife.

But, can the familiar help you avoid the Minotaur entirely? Or get you eyes inside the Prince's war council? Can it enhance itself or its master in different ways each day depending on what the master anticipates needing? Yes, because it is a Swiss Army knife.

Yeah, a Swiss Army Knife that consists entirely of dull and broken blades. Forget immediatly about scouting missions since anything with the minion trait will start wandering off after 1 minute left to their own devices. And even then, the familiar's extremly lame skill modifiers, above all at higher levels, would make such missions suicidal anyway. The fact that you have to waste your time commanding a creature that can do nothing decently, not even some pretty basic tasks, makes it a complete liability.

Damiel wrote:

so what does a familiar get you, that you cannot get without?

Nothing because it would be a feat that everybody has to take and they want to avoid that

It still gives flexibility

Being good at nothing is not flexiblility, it's uselessness

I think you're also failing to appreciate that, unlike say Dangerous Sorcery or Reach Spell, the familiar feat is only going to get more powerful over time.

Citation needed.

Frankly, the familiars here are already more flexible and impactful to alchemist and caster characters than many 1E familiars were before we had familiar archetypes, improved familiars, etc.

Is that a joke? 2E familiars don't even have the most basic features 1E familiars had, some didn't even make it as optional familiar abilities.

The APG play test made a note that there will probably be even more familiar abilities released in the APG. Other books can do the same. And frankly, they absolutely shouldn't be like the familiars of 1E which became a little too much like a second party member in sheer terms of what it let another player do.

Did you even play the game? Familiars had their uses but would clearly never replace a party member. No amount of extra gold and achetype combinations can make a familiar as powerful as a PC.

Gortle wrote:

So it falls to the GM to make a decision.

Not really.

Yes in the sense that a GM can always decide to add a houserule.

But there's no decisionmaking involved in running large weapons per the rules as written.

It's just that other game systems (like D&D or Pathfinder 1) makes people expect large weapons to deal more damage. That expectation is where you took a wrong turn.

I had this expectation too at first, and the rules about "damage die sizes" didn't clear the confusion. But as the dev team actually wants to move away from the insanity that 1E had fallen into with encounters cleared in a few rounds with massive damage flying everywhere, it makes sense that oversized weapons no longer give a damage bonus.

Crafting in 2nd Edition isn't supposed to be a good money maker for the reason that it was too easy in 1st Edition to break the economy in half. Crafting while adventuring was more or less free money for the party. I know a few artists and I can tell that making good art takes quite some work, and during adventuring you can expect to make rough sketches at best that won't sell for a copper.

Your player needs to spend some downtime in his craft if he hopes to make money out of it, by using the art lore skill as Timeshadow suggests. He can flavor it as painting some interesting landscapes he came accross while adventuring, and this would definitely make his art interesting to the common folk, but he needs to present something more than sketches quickly put together in an hour or neither art enthusiasts nor novices will be interested. Using downtime makes sense both on a balance perspective and on a flavor/believability perspective.

Then is a wand effectively an improvised magic light mace? And does casting barkskin on my wolf companion make it effectively a magical animal companion and make its unarmed attacks magical?

Be consistent with your logic and you will see how much sense it makes.

I don't think it would fit too well with the current design of the game: no activity or ability uses this type of limitation anymore, you either can use it during an encounter or you can't , there are no limited numbers of uses per encounter. The only exception is the way focus spells work, when 10 minutes of rest are available between fights.

For a 10th level feat, Quickened Casting is underwhelming, above all since metamagic feats can no longer be used together on a single cast. I really fail to imagine a recurring scenario where a single spell per day cast faster (not even nearly instantaneously) would make much of a difference. Making it usable once every few minutes would probably work and still wouldn't break the action economy in half.

Once per encounter would be extremely strong.

What exactly would make casting a single spell in an encounter in one less action "extremly strong"? It's not as if spell slots grew on trees, and not even the strongest spells available can be quickened (it only works on spells at least 2 levels lower than the caster's maximum spell level).

The idea being that it comes from mental acuity, rather than mysticism.

You're just describing wizards here.

I just want a character that throws stuff around with his mind, but it's not magic. It's just him doing it mentally.

I had a GM who reasoned exactly like this, and psionics became the most OP characters in his setting due to being as dangerous as wizards but with none of the usual weaknesses of magic users: dispelling had no effect on their powers, spell resistance didn't work, detect magic detected nothing, and even a place covered with dimensional locks and a giant antimagic field didn't prevent them from teleporting all over the place and wrecking havoc.

If a monk's ki powers must be treated as spells and even be renamed as such, I don't know why psychic abilities that behave like spells in many ways shouldn't.

I guess it all depends on what you consider "harming".

That's the entire problem with vague anathemas. "Own a slave", "steal", "lie" and "create undead" are clear anathemas that use unambiguous terms and don't have wiggle room to argue. "Harm" is subjet to interpretations and endless arguments. Except dealing damage clearly falls into harming, no question, and it's ridiculous for a deity that forbids using illusions to harm to also grant a domain spell (i.e a very specific spell that doesn't come from a spell list shared by multiple classes) of the illusion type that can only be used to deal damage.

The OP has no intent on good faith argument, they are clearly only interested in airing their complaints which essentially boil down to "I don't like anathemas that are restrictive." Well, guess what, that's literally the entire purpose of the "A" in the first place.

If you don't like those restrictions for your Character you shouldn't choose that deity in particular. This is a single spell that the "A" discourages you from using from a single one of the several optional domains they provide, it has nothing to do with "Bad Design" or bad writing and frankly, your assertion is childish and insulting to the authors and editors.

Sure, it's well-known that writers and designers can do no wrong, that's why every new edition keeps everything intact.

Oh, wait!

FlashRebel wrote:

You choose Sivanah specifically to have access to her domain spells

That isn't why I picked her at all.

Then I guess you have nothing to bring to a conversation about the absurdity of a domain spell being anathema to a deity that grants it to her clerics. Ignoring a problem doesn't make it go away.

GM Doug H wrote:

Good design wouldn't have any of those options in her portfolio. It's really not that complicated. And telling people "no one forced you to make that choice" or "just don't use that class option" is not a constructive response to design criticism....

Again, it is ONE spell from ONE of her portfolio choices... The portfolio that was designed to be god agnostic because of the limitations of game design and print space.

You keep mentioning PF2e being combat heavy, and it is... That has nothing to do with the usage of illusions as defensive tools, preparatory tools, combat aversion tools, escape tools, diffusion tools...

Your issue, again is to do with the thematics of the god...

As for the "its not constructive to say don't use that class feature"

Sure it is, if you are playing a fighter who doesn't kill their foes... You choose a non-lethal weapon and or make non-lethal attacks. This is exactly the same, you have chosen a god and these are the thematic restrictions based on what that god represents. This isn't a matter of a dead feat, this is a matter of that feat not suiting a choice the player chose when creating the character.

If I play Zon-Kuthon cleirc, is it bad design that healing hands is a level 1 feat and I get so many healing spells in the divine domain?
Now sure Zon-Kuthon isn't giving me the feat through the domain choice, but it certain is giving me the power and spells in the first place despite using them being an anathema to their values. This isn't questioned because the cleric is designed for a wide range of worshipers, the same goes with the domains, if delirium domain gave you no options I would agree with you. But this isn't the world we live in.

Having one less option for the feat out of four isn't making anything unplayable or any great flaw in design.

We're not talking about a choice of deity bringing a limitation to a general option of the cleric class, we're talking about a choice of deity that brings a very harsh limitation on the powers SHE HERSELF GIVES. You choose Sivanah specifically to have access to her domain spells and one of them violates her anathema. This is absurd.

Choosing a career choice that brings some limitations to your general options is one thing (I don't think anyone had a problem with opposition schools for example), but a career choice that brings a limitation to the options it itself gives to the point of making some of them barely usable is awful design.

The current problem with Lore as it is right now is one problem that 3.5 D&D has: a multitude of skills with very specific uses, some seeing no use at all in some adventures and being indispensable in other contexts. Just look at this list to get an idea of what I'm talking about for those who aren't familiar with 3.5 D&D.

Pathfinder made the skill system less headache-inducing by merging several skills in one across both editions. In 2E, Athletics has all the uses of Jump, Climb and Swim and also governs combat maneuvers, Acrobatics is a merge of Escape Artist, Tumble and Balance, Thievery is a merge of Disable Device, Open Lock and Sleight of Hands, and so on.

I just don't get why skills related to knowledge have been spreaded out like this. Even Crafting doesn't have several subcategories to train separately anymore and it's not as if recalling knowledge was in any way reliable (even on a success, you're not guaranteed to learn something actually helpful), and even then, other skills allow to recall knowledge about many creatures too (notably the four spellcasting skills).

Something clearly needs to be done about the Lore skill. Maybe have a Lore proficiency that improves by itself with levels like Perception, have its initial subcategory decided by the character's background and the Additional Lore feat to benefit from other subcategories.

Your proficiency with the weapon doesn't affect trip attempts with it: tripping requires an Athletics check and using a trip weapon adds at best its item bonus to attack rolls as an item bonus to the Athletics check. Note that Tripping with a trip weapon has other benefits:

You can use this weapon to Trip with the Athletics skill even if you don’t have a free hand. This uses the weapon’s reach (if different from your own) and adds the weapon’s item bonus to attack rolls as an item bonus to the Athletics check. If you critically fail a check to Trip using the weapon, you can drop the weapon to take the effects of a failure instead of a critical failure.

Also note that apparently, you don't even need to be proficient in the weapon to get its benefits to trip unless I missed something.

This also reminds me of some talk about the dragon instinct anathema about "letting a personal insult against you slide", cue extreme interpretations like "if anyone insults you directly, you have to challenge them to a fight or attack them without further provocation". I'm pretty sure there are nonviolent ways to settle this kind of things, even for a draconic barbarian, above all if resorting to violence would give further credit to the insult.

Too bad, no item exists that gives extra actions that can be used to throw a bomb or use an alchemical item then no amount of gold can fix this. Then needing allies to spend actions and spell slots just for one of your baseline abilities to work just makes it a bad ability unless it's somehow more valuable than the spell slot expended, which it's clearly not. And finally making a feat mandatory for one ability to have a point is bad design.

It's not hard to get the bonus actions to use those items.

I didn't know the alchemist had access to the quickened buff. Except it doesn't, actually.

If you either need a feat, multiclassing or assistance from a caster for one of your baseline class features to be usable, there is a big problem.

Well there are a few mixed signals in the rules about this one:

- Quick Alchemy doesn't have a limitation on its use (you can use it several times in a round, as many times as you want in a day as long as you have infused reagents or Perpetual Infusions), then Double Brew and the Lab Assistant familiar ability would be pointless if it only required a free action.

- Then there is the case of Alchemical Alacrity that lets you create 3 items at a time but without a specific feat these items must be used before your turn ends before degrading and you need three actions to use all of them, then one item is always lost and this ability is pointless without a feat if Quick Alchemy requires an action.

The alchemist has been the subject of many discussions regarding its baffling and incoherent design anyway then I suppose Quick Alchemy requires an action and I wouldn't be surprised if Alchemical Alacrity not working without a feat was yet another oversight.

Yeah, maybe this is just because I'm very gamist, but I don't think it should be that hard to escape from lower level manacles.

Poor manacles are a level 0 item. This means they are also, at best, a level 0 hazard. A level 0 hazard is a low-threat encounter even for a level 1 character. I don't think you should be able to more-or-less permanently immobilize a character with a level 0 item just because they don't happen to have Thievery trained.

The DC 17 Thievery check is actually a well-above-average DC for a level 0 item, and should be perfectly serviceable for the check to Escape. And this only gets worse for better manacles - simple manacles are above even a Very Hard DC for a level 1 item! You are already talking about a level 1 item that can force a character to make a check against a DC that is supposed to challenge a level 6 character. Telling them "no, you are just stuck there because you aren't trained in Thievery" seems quite excessive.

That all said, I probably would maintain parity between the checks - so the character would need to make as many Athletics checks to Escape as the number of Thievery checks needed to pick the lock.

And from a realism point of view... Athletics is definitely the check to escape if you are tied up head-to-toe in rope. Does it really make sense that a skill that lets you escape full-body-restraint doesn't let you slip out of some cheap handcuffs?

The question isn't the level of the manacles here but the level of the creature with the ability to use them in a single round of combat. Manacles aren't normally usable during combat and as far as I know no level 0 trap exists that shackles the victim on a failed check or something.

Back in 1E when quick-catch manacles and even spells to throw manacles at your enemies and restrain them from a distance were a thing I was so paranoid about them coming in an adventure that I always ranked up my Acrobatics and even took the Signature Skill feat with it just to be sure I wouldn't have to be miserable.

Clearly a non-magical combat ability that imposes a serious penalty with unlimited duration and can only be death with with a very specific skill that may not even be enough depending on the enemy's equipment is a dangerous ability. Or at least striking the manacles to destroy them during combat should be allowed (thin iron items have 20 HP and hardness 5) and this wouldn't be a huge issue.

There is one simple reason to gate multiclass archetypes behind ability score prerequisites: in this edition you lose less from your starting class by multiclassing than in the first edition. Potentially falling behind in spellcasting or reducing your sneak attack damage or anything of the sort makes you think twice before multiclassing, but in a case where multiclassing amounts to swapping some class feats (some may not interest you in the first place) with abilities and feats from another class without reducing your base class's overall power or renouncing to a capstone class feature, there needs to be a small obstacle to it in the form of ability score prerequisites.

I experimented with the system to have an idea of the possibilities in terms of character creation, and having several secondary ability scores at 14 at level 1 doesn't require any big sacrifices. Heck, having 4 ability scores at 14 is ridiculously easy.

Personally, I always thought the traditional ruling of "this one Knowledge check result represents everything you know about X" didn't make much sense. It wouldn't be rare for a character to "know" about some very obscure creature but fail to recall anything about a very common one by using the same Knowledge skill with this ruling due to the randomness of the dice.

Moreover, some creatures can have very counter-intuitive strengths and weaknesses and not learning about them in any way can lead to ludicrous situations if not an impromptu TPK: I remember my D&D 3.5 GM using a monster from an obscure rulebook and describing it as "a flying swarm of metal shards spinning at great speed like a whirlwind", my friend and I playing a rogue and a fighter respectively had no idea what to do against this thing and called for a retreat while our druid sent her animal companion on it and killed it in a single attack and proceeded to call us cowards and idiots for the rest of the session afterwards. Apparently, a creature that looked like a flying swarm of metal shards had no attack that dealt any damage and could be killed easily with any weapon. Don't ask.

The unreliability of Recall Knowledge might be the reason why the game is considered so punishing right now: by RAW, failing a single check bars you from retrying ("Once a character has attempted an incredibly hard check or failed a check, further attempts are fruitless") and it takes only one ability you didn't know the monster had for an encounter to rapidly turn into a complete disaster. Actually, the more I look at the bestiary, the more it looks like monsters were designed to be beaten by players who already know them and are prepared accordingly, and to destroy parties that don't have such knowledge.

Unfortunately, sundering items will probably not be a thing anymore due to the extreme potential to cheese encounters way too easily by destroying your enemy's equipment until it has no options left, or for any monster with a modicum of intellect to start doing the same thing to players and make martials miserable unless they have reliable unarmed attacks, as well as every fight potentially costing a fortune in magic items to repair or replace entirely. A reliable, widely available option usable at will that completely circumvents the hit point system and can potentially destroy the economy is a dangerous thing to have.

I know what I'm talking about : it only took a single orc fighter with a two-handed hammer and Improved Sunder to cheese the Rise of the Rule Lords campaign I played with friends of mine by smashing every piece of equipment and forcing surrenders without even getting close to killing our targets. This becomes even more penalizing at high levels of play when magic weapons and armor are very commonplace and losing their benefits is even harsher.

Having specific monsters that damage equipment as a gimmick is fine, having limited-use magic items or spells that damage equipment is fine too, having any creature with a Strength modifier above +2 able to ruin equipment with what amounts to basic Strikes aimed at attended items is dangerous.

Those values are a little bit off, I think. I plotted the difference between an alchemist that starts with Dex 16, increases it at every opportunity, and always has the highest-level alchemist's goggles that's at or below their level on one hand, and a martial that starts with an 18 in their attack stat, increases it at every opportunity, and always has a potency rune on their weapon that's the highest that's equal to or below their level.

At levels 1-6, it's a difference of 1-2 points. Martials pull ahead at 2nd level because +1 potency is a level 2 item and alchemist's goggles are a level 4 item. At level 4, the alchemist closes the gap to +1 again, but at level 5 the martials pull ahead again: the alchemist gets +1 from their stat, but martials get +2 from proficiency.

At level 7 through 9, the alchemist has achieved parity because they are now also experts in their attacks. At this point, both are experts, have +1 weapons, and an 18-19 in their attack stat.

But it doesn't last. At 10th level, the martials gain a +2 advantage because their stats now go to 20 while the alchemist hits the useless 19, and they also increase their item bonus to +2. At 11th, the alchemist closes that gap a little because that's when goggles +2 come online. But at 13th and above, the martials get master proficiency, and there's really no coming back from that. At this point, martials are 3-4 points ahead (except at 15th, where alchemists catch up to Dex 20 - martials...

Using intelligence for attack rolls wouldn't be strictly necessary since being a source of damage for your party as an alchemist is an option and not the one purpose of the class. It's just ludicrous to not even be good at it when you pick the research field that screams "damage and debuff". Whatever you pick as a research field, you still remain some sort of supportive jack-of-all-trades. All classes with similar career choices to pick (the barbarian's instinct, the bard's muse, the champion's cause, the cleric's doctrine and deity, the druid's order, the ranger's hunter's edge, the rogue's racket, the sorcerer's bloodline and the wizard's thesis) play differently based on this starting choice and often have access to different exclusive feats. What makes the research fields different is what items can be created indefinitely (most of the time items so weak they're barely useful anyway), what type of items can be created in larger amounts during your daily preparations and a few minor special abilities (the chirurgeon's starting ability is a joke).

The worst part of the alchemist isn't really that intelligence doesn't contribute to attack rolls, it actually barely contributes to anything at all aside from class feats that rapidly become mandatory. Seriously why is Powerful Alchemy not a baseline class feature instead of a level 8 feat?

I've seen several people mention the issue of Intelligence as a non-factor in the class' accuracy, and I can't help wondering how important that really is. I don't deny it's true, of course, but given how stat purchasing and advancement works (especially the latter) in 2E, is it really an issue? After all, it's not especially difficult to increase your accuracy stat at the same pace as your Intelligence right up until you get an apex item, is it?

Having the numbers against you at all levels with your bread-and-butter offensive option is definitely a big deal. Taking proficiency, possible item bonus and maximum possible ability bonus into account, the alchemist is always strictly worse than other classes at hitting things. About a -2 difference with spellcasters that don't have items that improve their spell attack rolls but reach legendary proficiency, and -3 with all other classes that use weapons (-5 with fighters specifically). This is not a negligible difference. The fact that the alchemist never goes beyong expert proficiency in any type of attack roll, even when specializing in offense, is baffling. At this point it's better to admit that the alchemist will never be a viable combat class and just an awkward support class.

If we're necroing a thread based on experience since launch...

I've had an Alchemist in one of my two Age of Ashes campaigns I'm running who has played since level 1. Its definitely been the class with the most hurdles, and is probably the most awkward to play.

That said, I don't think its horrible.

The class has a lot of utility, the ability to target elemental weaknesses easily, and can do nasty things like impose Flat-Footed on targets that persists regardless of circumstance. This has been extremely powerful. As well, certain elixirs like Mistform are extremely efficient (action wise) damage reduction that apply across all tiers of play.

I think the big issues of the class are most evident at level 1 -

First, the class lies to you about your primary attribute. Accuracy is more important than anything, and therefore either Dexterity (for bombers) or Strength (for mutagenists) needs to be your highest stat, full stop. Intelligence is nice for the class... like Charisma is nice for a Paladin. But starting with a 14-16 because you thought your accuracy stat was less important than the listed primary stat - Intelligence - because the book told you so - is demoralizing once the full impact of your reduced accuracy kicks your repeatedly across the life of your character.

Second, the resource curve for the class is NOT 'fun'. You're most strained for resources early on when they feel really darned important, and later on you have SO MANY reagents there ceases to be any real daily management. Just make all the things.

Beyond that, its one of the few classes in the core rulebook that isn't easy to play - a lot of the combat classes are pretty foolproof if you start with a 18 primary stat, with class feats serving as icing on your badass-cake. Alchemist requires a lot of choices, and it demands those choices be good, or you're going to have a bad time. Its fairly unique in this regard.

Altogether, I don't think Alchemist is a bad class - I just don't know it belongs in the Core...

I was also about to bring up accuracy as a very low point of the alchemist when it comes to fighting: all classes get extra accuracy from their primary attribute (either for weapon attacks or spell attacks) with the exception of the scoundrel rogue's charisma option over dexterity for those who want to be skill monkeys.

The alchemist's awful proficiencies are also a massive downside that add to the accuracy problem: literally every martial class has better bomb proficiency than the alchemist. The alchemist isn't better with bombs than casters are with weapons, their backup option when spells don't work, while it's supposed to be the alchemist's main offensive option. Better be a chirurgeon or mutagenist and use a crossbow or darts than be a bomber if bombs are worse than regular weapons anyway. Better yet, multiclassing in wizard and getting offensive cantrips that will always do better than bombs and won't need a massive feat investment to be viable.

That's because 2e Alchemist is an extremely poorly designed class. If you wanna play a skill monkey, Rogue is way better. If you play a healer, Cleric, Druid, and divine Sorcerers are way better. If you wanna play a skill monkey and healer, Bard is way better.

Alchemist isn't good at anything really, except crafting. I'd recommend playing something else.

My thoughts exactly. The game actively encourages specializing in a few things so an adventuring party can face many challenges, except the alchemist can't really specialize and feels more like a consumables dispenser than an active character.

To go back to the main topic, the alchemist has one big design flaw that makes it terrible at low level and nearly game-breaking at high level: unlike spellcasters that have spells that use slots of different levels and thus need to often resort to lower-level spells even at high levels of play, the alchemist has reagents that can all be used to craft its highest possible level of alchemical items, and more and more per level as well. At low level it only allows to create a few pathetic consumables that fell barely better than cantrips, and at high level it allows to create a large number of very powerful consumables that can make a party truly terrifying and nearly unstoppable. For those who know about the "Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards" problem that plagued D&D, the PF2 alchemist has a similar "quadratic" progression problem.

If I remember correctly, starting a fight in the open calls for a Perception roll for initiative, starting while sneaking on your opponents undetected allows a Stealth roll instead, and starting a fight while in a social situation with your opponents allows a Deception roll. You need to either sneak into a fight or suddenly turn on someone you acted friendly with a moment ago to use Surprise Attack.

Pretty sure Goliaths are owned by WotC, but if Paizo wanted their own ancestry in that vein they could always make half giants.

The term "goliath" wasn't invented by WotC in the first place, then I don't know how they can claim to own it. Copyrighting a word that existed at least a full millenium before you were born is completely ridiculous.

How is it wrong that multiclass archetypes don't give you access to everything their parent classes have to offer? You cannot be a universalist if you're not a wizard to begin with, you simply borrow some aspects of the wizard and many of their abilities will remain out of reach. Deal with it.

I personally find the Chirurgeon Perpetual Infusions to be the best ones. It's bad, but at least useful.

I'm really curious to know how elixirs that have a small chance of curing specific afflictions are better than an unlimited amount of bombs.

FlashRebel wrote:

By RAW, only melee attacks add Strength modifier to damage by default.

"When you use melee weapons, unarmed attacks, and thrown ranged weapons, the most common modifier you’ll add to damage is your Strength ability modifier." Melee weapons, unarmed attacks, and thrown ranged weapons add strength modifiers by default. Unarmed attacks aren't weapons, so they must be specifically mentioned and they ARE mentioned in the same place melee and thrown ranged weapons are. So RAW, yes seedpods add str dam.

As to the monk's wind crash, the property overrides the normal full str damage added: it's not proof the seedpod doesn't add it.

If you disagree, how much str damage to you add to a punch? The SAME section that tells you that covers all unarmed attacks and not just that including ranged ones.

The full quote from damage rolls, 1st step:
"When you use melee weapons, unarmed attacks, and thrown ranged weapons, the most common modifier you’ll add to damage is your Strength ability modifier. Weapons with the propulsive trait sometimes add half your Strength modifier. You typically do not add an ability modifier to spell damage, damage from most ranged weapons, or damage from alchemical bombs and similar items."

The last sentence is void as unarmed attacks are specifically NOT weapons so none of it applies. The second line covers wind crash' exception. The first is pretty clear on what you add to unarmed attack.

Where do you see ranged unarmed attacks, by default, do not add str?

When the result of your attack roll with a weapon or unarmed attack equals or exceeds your target’s AC, you hit your target! Roll the weapon or unarmed attack’s damage die and add the relevant modifiers, bonuses, and penalties to determine the amount of damage you deal. Calculate a damage roll as follows.

Melee damage roll = damage die of weapon or unarmed attack + Strength modifier + bonuses + penalties

Ranged damage roll = damage die of weapon + Strength modifier for thrown weapons + bonuses + penalties

Ranged weapons don’t normally add an ability modifier to the damage roll, though weapons with the propulsive trait (page 283) add half your Strength modifier (or your full modifier if it is a negative number), and thrown weapons add your full Strength modifier.

Magic weapons with striking, greater striking, or major striking runes add one or more weapon damage dice to your damage roll. These extra dice are the same die size as the weapon’s damage die. At higher levels, most characters also gain extra damage from weapon specialization.

Need I say more?

The rules for damage rolls don't distinguish between weapon attacks and unarmed attacks, they only care about if the attack is melee or ranged. Seedpods are ranged attacks and don't have any damage improving traits or specified bonus to damage rolls, so you don't get to add your Strength modifier to them.

By RAW, only melee attacks add Strength modifier to damage by default. Ranged attacks add no modifier that isn't explicitly specified to damage, unless they have the thrown (apply full Strength modifier) or propulsive (apply half of Strength modifier) traits.

Seedpods are a ranged attack with none of those traits and no specified bonus to damage, therefore you don't get to add your Strength modifier or even a portion of it to your damage rolls with them. The unarmed trait doesn't change anything about it. Case in point, the monk's wind crash is a ranged unarmed attack with the propulsive trait and thus adds half the monk's Strength bonus to damage.

Unless errata'd into something decent, seedpods are a terrible option until weapon specialization comes around. And even then, you're better off playing an elf with Elemental Wrath if you want a free ranged attack at will.

I didn't expect so many answers to the thread, honestly.

Now for a funnier question, would you consider this as a benefit or a disadvantage of being small?

Personally I was very disappointed by the elemental bloodline: blasting with fire deals fire damage, every other element deals bludgeoning damage. As if cold, acid or electricity stopped existing. The only difference between the other three elements is the effect of Elemental Motion. And even then, a fly speed is infinitely less situational than a swim speed or a very slow burrow speed.

Unlimited lesser bombs are kind of nice I guess, but that still leaves 2/3 of the class unable to do reliable damage. Not everyone is going to be a grenadier alchemist.

This isn't a problem if options that don't involve dealing damage provide some cool stuff to do. The current problem is that none of the research fields provide anything that really feels substantial apart from unlimited ressources for two specific consumables (the chirurgeon clearly being the worst one with only antidotes and antiplagues, the most situational elixirs ever, being affected). Whatever you pick, you remain stuck with many OK-ish abilities but nothing truly outstanding. A bomber is beaten in damage and debuffing by a martial or a combat caster, a chirurgeon can hardly match a divine caster in terms of healing and utility, and a mutagenist doesn't have anything as good as what a buffer caster can offer.

You cannot expect a class to fill several roles at once and not run into serious problems.

The alchemist class in its current state is riddled with issues. Other than the now fixed mutagenist ability that didn't do anything, the chirurgeon baseline ability actually has a skill tax, it does nothing unless the alchemist is trained in Medicine, and its benefit is to replace Medicine checks with Crafting checks for all Medicine's uses, while you can produce enough elixirs in a day to heal the whole party to full health several times over and an infinite amount of antidotes and antiplagues, and higher proficiency in Medicine is still required to have access to related skill feats. What baffles me the most is the alchemist's bomb proficiency never going beyond expert. Have fun trying to use those sweet additives effectively against the one strong enemy when you have less chances to hit with everything you have than any class ever.

The alchemist would be more interesting if research fields were more impactful, for example by altering the class's progression like the cleric's doctrines do.

The description of the Splash trait is straightforward to me:

When you use a thrown weapon with the splash trait, you don’t add your Strength modifier to the damage roll. If an attack with a splash weapon fails, succeeds, or critically succeeds, all creatures within 5 feet of the target (including the target) take the listed splash damage. On a failure (but not a critical failure), the target of the attack still takes the splash damage. Add splash damage together with the initial damage against the target before applying the target’s weaknesses or resistances. You don’t multiply splash damage on a critical hit.

Splash damage works like a special property and isn't affected by weapon damage modifiers. The only way that currently exists to alter splash damage is with alchemist feats.

This reminds me exactly of a player my friend and I had in a 1st Edition campaign we never got to finish: he used to be our GM for D&D 3.5 and already had a terrible habit of making up rules all the time (even telling us one day that the game doesn't need to be balanced because it wouldn't be realistic) and invoking rule 0 when called out, and as a player in our Pathfinder campaign he would question every rule and every decision from my friend/the GM while showing he hadn't read anything, wouldn't listen when we agreed to not take any 3rd party feats or classes for they were terribly badly balanced or outright overpowered, and legit tried to impose himself as the party leader.

We had to abandon everything and let the campaign die to be rid of him. If I were you I wouldn't bother any longer with your problem player and get rid of him as early as possible before he ruins everything for everyone.

One of the main gripes with PF1 was the "Linear fighter/quadratic wizard" problem. After 7th level most of the time, the spellcasters would so far outshine the martials that playing a martial was tantamount to playing a henchman/henchwoman (Thus the abundance of capped spellcasters such as L6 games)

There is a game "Ars Magica" which makes the Wizard the star of the show and all other "classes" are supporting characters. PF2 was trying to move away from that.

You are correct that spellcasters have been nerfed but since they were FAR superior to martials in PF1, that is not a bad thing.

From what I could gather, D&D wizards really started to become insane because of rulebook authors being overly biased and buffing them to the stars, while at the same time crippling the sorcerer as much as humanly possible. The D&D 3.5 system could legitimately be labeled unbalanced as a wizard could do virtually everything better than any other class except healing (and in PF1 even wizards had access to healing spells).

The main problem that arose was extensions bringing always more spells that prepared spellcasters could hoard to be even more unstoppable. PF1 tried to balance things out by skimming the spell lists but the magic system still had its fundamental problems, like save-or-suck spells that can cheese encounters and the prevalance of touch attacks that make most armor totally useless.

I'm glad now that magic no longer makes automatic top-tier classes. By the way, spellcasting was nerfed but at least casters no longer need to ditch their weapons to cast and can actually fight decently with them now that they don't get only half the scaling bonus on attack rolls that martial classes get. Using your weapons as a caster is not great, but not a waste of actions either.

My theory is this was made explicitly to avoid breaking the game by making the extra action usable for anything: an older edition of D&D (I think it's 3rd) has a version of haste that gives an extra standard action per round of combat, and it pretty much breaks the game by allowing everyone to make full attacks after moving and spellcasters to cast twice per round (and magic has always been considered overly powerful in general in this edition).

Having an extra Stride/Strike per round is already a big deal no matter what class your character is, and not having a multiple attack penalty on the extra Strike would make the spell way too good.

Vlorax wrote:

There's nothing wrong with Giant Instinct and Titan Mauler no matter how many times people complain and post homebrew trying to "fix" it.

Actually, there is. There are no "Giant-sized weapons" in the core book. There are no longer even "Small and Medium sized weapons" anymore. So the GM can either follow that same rule and say it does no additional damage for the penalty, or he can try to to reverse-engineer a weapon from the bestiary, but that usually is just made-up stats based on the giant's level, not a solid attempt to create weapon damage by size..

It's already in the rules:

"In most cases, Small or Medium creatures can wield a Large weapon, though it’s unwieldy, giving them the clumsy 1 condition, and the larger size is canceled by the difficulty of swinging the weapon, so it grants no special benefit."

According to bestiary entries, large creatures use the same damage dice as medium ones (see the gnoll hunter as an example).

There is also a bulk conversion table for equipment of larger size, and it globally works just like in 1E: every extra size category doubles the base price and weight for everything of 1 bulk or higher and converts light bulk into 1 bulk, with small and medium sizes being treated as identical when it comes to equipment.

Take a medium weapopn, double its base price, double its bulk or increase it to 1 bulk if it's originally of light bulk and you get the giant-sized version. It's globally pretty worthless for a regular adventurer who isn't a giant instinct barbarian.

In addition, the classes that grant animal companions also all have feats that give your companion take extra actions-- Druids can take Mature Animal Companion at lvl 4; Rangers can take Companion's Cry at lvl 4 and Mature Animal Companion at lvl 6; and Champions can take Imposing Destrier at lvl 10.

Mature Animal Companion doesn't grant an extra action: it lets the animal companion act on its own when not directly commanded but it only does one action.

I understand what the minion trait is about : it's a way to let players have creatures under their control without stretching encounters too much or breaking the action economy.

To be fair, I was messing around trying to create a rogue with druid archetype feats to get an animal companion and thus always have a flanking partner available. The mounting part was mostly a bonus.