It seems like a lot of Paizo errata are focused on nerfing. I would prefer buffing weak than nerfing strong.
To be fair it's not just Pathfinder, most systems I've seen are much quicker to serve up nerfs rather than buffs when issuing errata.
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Instincts are more like the Totem rage power chains in 1e than Bloodlines. They change quite a bit, but they aren't majorly different unless you invest more into them. Yeah, Bloodrager was so much fun. I loved playing an Aberrant Bloodrager with a Wand of Long Arm. 15' reach anyone?
For me personally, 2E Barbarian Instincts feel like a poorly-conceived attempt to recreate the bloodlines of Bloodragers. There are so few Instinct-specific feats that the different instincts don't really feel much different from each other. Bloodrager bloodlines had much bigger differences between them. As a fan of the Bloodrager, I was bitterly disappointed with how samey all the Instincts felt. Unfortunately, the result is that we'll never see a 2E Bloodrager, since that concept has already been implemented, albeit in a very superficial way, in the 2E Barbarian.
I love bugs in general so I'd love to see Formians become a playable ancestry. Additionally, I'd love to see some kind of playable Ooze ancestry.
Personally, I'd like to see the Shifter have the ability to stay in a Battle Form for an hour, not a minute like the Druid, without having to spend a feat on it. Also, 10 HP. Finally, I'd like to see a more combat oriented feat list.
If you want Captain America, Fighter is the way to do it. They have a ton of feats that give you neat tricks with Shields. Not to mention a whole Shield fighting style.Champion all the way. Yep, Champion works very well too.
If you want Captain America, Fighter is the way to do it. They have a ton of feats that give you neat tricks with Shields. Not to mention a whole Shield fighting style.
Meh, at this point everything is speculation. I wouldn't get too excited or disappointed by anything right now. Wait until the final product and then make up your mind when you have all the information.
A few other changes I'd like to see: I mentioned this in a different discussion, but I'd like to see Barbarians lose Anathema. For me personally, imposing a code of conduct on a class known for violence and chaos is a bit jarring, I don't feel it fits. Also, I'd like to see the Linguistics skill make a comeback. I love having characters that speak multiple languages, probably because I only speak one. Maybe I've missed something but I haven't found any way to learn new languages as you level up in 2E.
This is just me, but I'd like to see Monks start off with Expert proficiency in Unarmed Attacks. Personally, I find it bizarre that Fighters make better unarmed combatants than Monks in some ways.
I'd like to ask Paizo to remove the Anathema restrictions from Barbarians. I find it ridiculous that a class named "Barbarian" would have a code of conduct. Barbarians are supposed to represent pure violent, destructive chaos. Codes of conduct are just wrong on that class.
Maybe I missed it, in which case I apologize, but one situation where Power Attack is absolutely worth having is during turns when you need to move. If you have to Step or Stride, you can't use Exacting Strike, and PA is better than just attacking twice in my opinion because of MAP. Just something to throw out there.
For my part, I find Thaumaturge too complex and fiddly, like most of the non-core classes. I feel like Paizo went too far nerfing anything non-core to avoid a certain crowd screaming about power creep. The result is that players need a great deal of system mastery to make non-core classes anywhere near competitive with core. Thaumaturge, Inventor, Swashbuckler, they just seem meh to me. I'm hoping they avoid continuing this trend with the release of Kineticist. I hope Kineticist can actually be competitive with the core classes. Just my own perspective.
As someone who really disliked the playtest version of the Kineticist, I like everything I read in that link. Very optimistic now.
I love that with all their implements, the Thaumaturge is basically a "Murderhoarder".
I would absolutely LOVE to see an Undead Instinct for Barbarian, but I doubt we'll get it in this book, sadly.
Personally, I'd love to see an Undead Instinct for Barbarian. I was hoping that would be included in Book of the Dead, but I suspect I'll be disappointed.
It's a feat tax, everyone has to have it or you fall behind, especially if someone else in the party has it. Yep, understood. I personally am of the belief that Power Attack should be a combat option like Fight Defensively, rather than a feat. Also, I think combat maneuvers like Trip and Bull Rush shouldn't require a feat to use without provoking an Attack of Opportunity. I certainly don't think Combat Expertise should be a pre-requisite for anything either. I hate feat taxes in general.
Power Attack. Not sure I understand. Are you saying Power Attack is a bad feat because everyone should be able to do that without spending a feat on it, or are you saying that trading accuracy for extra damage is bad in general?
How does a Liberator Champion deal with slavers? With extreme prejudice.
Also, in addition to the action failure ( you lose an action because you tried ) "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes you're on fire."
I think the biggest flaw with Inventor is that Intelligence really doesn't do much for them. There's Overdrive, and that's basically it. To me, Overdrive isn't nearly as good as a maxed out Strength would be. Of course, that's another issue with Inventor: why do they need to be so strong? They're basically using machines to fight for them, whether it's power armor, an uber weapon, or a robot buddy. I really think they should've used Int for attack and damage, and linked Overdrive to some other skill/ability, or even dumped Overdrive altogether. I still think Inventor is very cool, but I do question some of these decisions.
I think Inventor is fine. I prefer having Strength or Dex for key ability instead of Intelligence, cuz the class hardly uses Int at all, but that's a pretty minor quibble. Alchemist otoh, is a complete disaster. Especially the Mutagenist.
No way, Inventor is designed far better than Alchemist.
Yeah I didn't realize you could use Overdrive in anticipation of an upcoming fight either. That's pretty cool.
I think a major part of the problem is Psychics just use the Occult spell list, which doesn't make them much different than certain Sorcerer bloodlines. There's no list of "psionic powers" or anything like that. Bards were never hyped up as being "different", like Psionics have traditionally been. They were always spellcasters. Psionics have had a very different system in the past, which is what people seem to want, based on the hate that Occult spellcasting received in 1e.
In all fairness, I've heard that the more recent APs like Abomination Vaults and Ruby Phoenix don't have the plethora of brutally lethal encounters the early APs are known for (especially Age of Ashes and Agents of Edgewatch). That alone makes me more likely to give 2e another try.
I think a major part of the problem is Psychics just use the Occult spell list, which doesn't make them much different than certain Sorcerer bloodlines. There's no list of "psionic powers" or anything like that. The Thaumaturge suffers from a similar problem: I don't see much difference between that class and the Investigator with the exception of the odd choice of Charisma for the key ability. It certainly bears no resemblance to a 1e Occultist, which is what I thought it would be.
My experience with PF2 is limited, my old group started an Age of Ashes campaign but everyone ragequit at 6th lvl because of exactly what's being said in this thread: the default game difficulty is just tuned up too high to be enjoyable (at least for that group). I was willing to keep going but I wasn't having fun either. We all went back to 1e. Issues I saw: 1. Monsters never miss, at least on a first attack. In 6 levels I don't think I ever saw a monster miss it's first attack. They didn't miss too many second attacks either. 2. With the exception of healing, which is invaluable, I found casters to be a total liability. Monsters seem to make the vast majority of their saves, so attack spells are generally worthless. 3. Monsters almost never miss, but PCs sure do! The "whiff factor" is pretty high in 2e and I never did notice much improvement in that. Maybe at higher levels. 2e definitely wasn't for me, though I'm willing to give it another shot. Between getting hit every single time and missing at least half (if not more) of our attacks, combat became a long, boring slog. We depended way too much on our Cleric to keep us alive. I think really challenging combats should be rare and memorable, not the default setting. 1e is definitely more my cup of tea at this point.
Inventor is starting to sound pretty cool!
What is the Inventor's niche? They must be good at something, but from what I'm reading, it just seems like they're worse than every other martial. I'm sure they must have a strength though, what are they good at?They offer a unique class fantasy. That’s enough for most players, who are not terribly plugged into optimization. I don't see how that's relevant. Just because a class is "unique" doesn't mean it can't be balanced with other classes.
What is the Inventor's niche? They must be good at something, but from what I'm reading, it just seems like they're worse than every other martial. I'm sure they must have a strength though, what are they good at?
IIRC the Inventor gets an oversized damage bonus based on an intelligence (crafting?) check, so you're catching up with barbarian logic. That's the idea at any rate, not sure if the damage mathed out to make up for being -1 to hit compared to other martials. Barbarians have Strength as their key ability though, so they don't suffer an accuracy penalty AND they get extra damage. I must be missing something, how is the Inventor even playable as a martial class that's worse at hitting things than any other martial class?
I don't understand the point of a martial class that can't attack with its key ability. Is it different for the weapon/armor Inventor? How are they supposed to compete with other martials?
Color me curious. PF 1e is still my favorite fantasy rpg. I've played 2e and D&D 5e, and they're both fine, but 1e is my first love. Still, I'm quite happy to try out a 5.5/6e, just like I was happy to try out PF 2e and D&D 5e.
Personally I like Warpriest, Inquisitor, and Occultist. I also love Druids once they get Wild Shape. Prior to Wild Shape, Druids are really dull (I hate hiding behind an Animal Companion). After 4th lvl though, they are alot of fun. Hunter with the Feral Hunter archetype is quite fun too, for the same reason (I love Wild Shape).
It's extremely easy to get hit in this edition, at least from what I've seen. I don't even think armor serves a purpose beyond maybe avoiding a crit. I think there are 2 core issues contributing to this: first, monster stats are too high. They're hard to hit, they hit PCs the vast majority of the time, and they make most of their saves. The other issue is encounter balance in the early 2e APs seems to be way out of whack. Too many high difficulty encounters too close together. Just my own observations.
Remember you can only wild shape into a form provided by one of your Aspects, and you only get 1 Aspect every 5 levels (unless they changed this in errata). Compare that with a Druid, who can turn into any Animal, Elemental or Plant form, has full spellcasting, AND an Animal Companion on top of all that. Yes, Shifters are absolutely putrid. My use of the word nerf is correct because the existing option for comparison IS WILD SHAPE. Not the horrifically limited version the Shifter gets, but the one Druids get. There's another nerf as well, this one to Aspects. Hunters automatically get all aspects. Shifters only get one every 5 levels. More Aspects fixes one huge issue with Shifter; that it barely has any shifting ability at all. The Druid can choose from any Animal in any book, but the Shifter, at 20th lvl, gets only 5 forms? Awful. At my level now, I have flying forms, swimming forms, combat forms and scouting forms. If I played by RAW I'd have a combat form and...a flying form I guess? Extremely limiting. I could've played a Feral Hunter or Feral Shifter Druid and been exponentially more powerful. Without the house rule, I wouldn't even have bothered with Shifter, I would've picked one of those two options instead. Shifter just doesn't live up to the name. If they had called it something different, maybe ppl wouldn't hate on it as much. But by calling the class Shifter but severely limiting it's Shifting ability, I feel the criticism the class has received is more than justified. Shifter should be BETTER at shapeshifting than a Druid, not worse.
You also need to look at the Aspects themselves. For the most part, they give you less than you would get if you had regular Wild Shape or cast the appropriate spell. Take Deinonychus. A 4th lvl Druid wild shaping into that form gets 5 attacks. A Shifter has to wait until 8th lvl to get all 5 attacks. Giant Scorpion is another example. Someone casting Vermin Shape to turn into a Giant Scorpion gets 3 primary attacks. A Shifter turning into a Giant Scorpion gets 2 primary and 1 secondary attacks. By RAW, a Shifter turning into a Giant Wasp doesn't even get an attack! They have to wait until 8th lvl to get the Sting attack, which is ludicrous and was probably an oversight. There are alot of similar examples. They really went out of their way to nerf the class into submission for some reason.
I think that house rule is the only thing keeping my character competitive. Remember you can only wild shape into a form provided by one of your Aspects, and you only get 1 Aspect every 5 levels (unless they changed this in errata). Compare that with a Druid, who can turn into any Animal, Elemental or Plant form, has full spellcasting, AND an Animal Companion on top of all that. Yes, Shifters are absolutely putrid. To answer your questions, my party is 8th level. My main land combat form is Deinonychus, my aerial combat form is Giant Dragonfly, and my water combat form is Crocodile. Like I mentioned, due to my GM's generous house rule, I have 8 aspects/major forms. If we were using the rules as written, I'd have all of 2 forms/aspects. For a class named Shifter, that's really pathetic. If I had known about the Legendary Shifter, I would've recommended that from the beginning, but we were already well into the AP by the time I discovered it.
I play this one Legendary Shifters but it's 3rd party I highly recommend that as well. My next Shifter character will use that product.
I just saw this thread, apologies for the late response. I'm playing a Shifter in a Jade Regent campaign currently. No archetypes, but my GM agreed with me that the class is massively underpowered, so he made a house rule that allows my character to learn a new Aspect every level. I think that house rule is the only thing keeping my character competitive. Legendary Games came out with a product called Legendary Shifters. It's a redesign of the Shifter class and it's fantastic. I highly recommend using that if you're planning to play a Shifter. As written, the original class is really just awful.
The biggest issue I've run into is keeping a group together that long (11th level). Groups I've been part of have fallen apart by 7th level cause the players who are playing casters say they're not having fun and they quit. It's also not fun to constantly hear complaints about how weak spells are, how often the bad guys make their saves, etc.
There are two problems as I see it: First, monsters have crazy high saves in 2e for some reason. They almost never seem to fail saving throws. Second, spells r really weak in 2e compared to their 1e counterparts. So, because monsters have such high stats, they rarely fail, and when they do, the spells are so weak, the effects are underwhelming to say the least. It's a toxic combination for anyone that likes playing casters. For martials, I think 2e is a very good system. For casters, it's terrible. I've never seen someone actually have fun playing a caster in 2e. They're typically frustrated and unhappy, at least the ones I've seen.
As a player I greatly enjoy challenge but I've seen more than one TPK where the GM ran it through and deadly and what usually happens isn't "ok let's remake a party and go back at it" it's "f+*# this thing let's play something else" and that's a loss of sunk time, prep work enthusiasm and fun.And then there's my 5e group who have had 3 or 4 TPKs and a total of something like 17 character deaths going through Curse of Strahd and just keep going back to finish it out of spite at this point. Huh. I didn't even know TPKs were possible in 5e. That game is ridiculously easy from my experience, unless the GM goes out of their way to kill the PCs.
Tieflings are considered "native outsiders", meaning their home plane is the material plane. That spell shouldn't work on you.
Personally I'm not a fan. I don't even like guns/steampunk stuff in my fantasy (although I LOVE Psionics). The funny thing is I go target shooting recreationally all the time but I'm still not a fan of guns in my fantasy. Sci-Fi/Superhero games hell yea, bring on the guns. Just not in fantasy. My .02.
What makes a man turn Neutral? Is it money? Lust for power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality??
It's not a problem that casters can't tie martials in beating things to death. Temporarily getting pretty close, sure. Tie permanently with the option to just become a full caster again at will? No.I don't see this as a problem. They're temporary power boosts to get casters close to martials. I fail to see the problem with a permanent version not doing that. When not transformed you're still a full caster. It would be nice if there was an option to dump spellcasting entirely in exchange for longer lasting, more powerful wild shape. Ppl who play Wild Order generally do it for the Wild Shape, not the spells. Maybe if spells were better in 2e, that would change, but most spells in this edition are underwhelming at best. Just my own opinion.
It's not Warpriest that's the problem, it's that Cloistered just gets the same stuff as every other caster gets baseline. Warpriest is also an issue, it's horribly designed. You only get increasing Proficiency with one weapon; your deity's favored weapon. So basically, you have to choose your deity based on their favored weapon, which is ridiculous. Warpriest is light on the "war" part.
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