Ikusias's page

well thanks to the Op and the other poster, I've clearly got the message that PF2 made the ranger in utter and boring crap and that the recent update did nothing at all to change this... nice.
So now that my favorite class is down the drain for good, as i don't see any incentive in submitting myself in this new form of selfabuse, that all halfcasters have been removed from the game and that full casters range between utter mediocrity and absolutely necessary (cleric)...
is there anything actually new and interesting left or I can return back to PF1 + unchained?

Personally I'm of the idea that shields simply need to get dented only when actively parrying damages twice their hardness or more, more value for the user and more realism to the fact that many small attacks don't damage the shield itself but can severely start to bruise the wielder, while shield breakage remains delegated to particularly heavy hits or bad luck (criticals, magical weapons, important opponents and the like)
It would give a more realistic and lesss pathetic feel without need to change too much...
Don't forget that the damage reduction is eating the character reaction for the turn and can absorb only one of the potential three attacks incoming.

I've got a clear impression that the developers severely undervalued the benefits of a shield, with damages around like what has been discussed so far, shields should stop hardness damage from reaching the user on the reaction, but be dented only if the damage is double their hardness.

Why? The shield itself helps intercepting the attacks, but the arm of the wielder underneath gets beaten progressively to a pulp, historical shields were quite strudy but couldn't prevent trauma perfectly.
What's the end result? a sword and board combatant can last longer on the frontlines agains lesser opponent, btu their numbers and attrition will still logorate him/her, while the shield would remain usable except for unlucky strikes.
Against important foes instead the shield wouldn't become useles at the first solid hit but will become a tactical decision between mitigating as much damage as possible, at the cost of a character reaction every trun against one attack, or preserving the shield for the extra AC as long as possible.

Honestly so far this incarnation of the ranger has done a lot to make me hate this playtest more, if possible:

- removed all iconic abilities of the class favoured enemy and terrain
- removed all magic support from one of the martial casters of the game
- animal companion is disappointing due to "balancing" and action economy
- removal of bow feats and style in favor of crossbows...
- new iconic ability locks the class solely in twin weapon figthing or archery (not supported)
- for further insult and injury longbows got tagged with the barrage bullshit.. has anyone in the development staff EVER taken archery lesson before writing this idiocy? volley is used only for massed formations of archers shooting en masse in the enemy formation, not for a single archer sniping the enemies at much shorter ranges
- optional signature class ability is trapmaking... one of the most mediocre and usually narratively inappropriate choices, with traps being consumables, costing gold in a silver economy and being utterly mediocre

Essentially everything I liked from PF1 of the class has been utterly dismantled to be replaced with all the most mediocre alternatives awailable in the archetipes... not the class I want...
but after all the other lemons we got compared to the hipe of the previews there's nothing to be surprised

Ancient's blood tying up a reaction on top of the permanent loss of resonance makes no sense: if you have a permanent disadvantage the benefit should be permanent as well hence the ability should always be on like the old magic resistance

End result of this mess was that, when my players saw the rules on lockpicking they decided then and there to resort to smasshing any lock they needed open, faster, simpler and less failure prone...

My first impression after studying bith bestiary and playtest manual is that they were done by two different staffs, one hellbent on overcharging every monster on the assumption that all players were powerplayers of the worse kind, the other intent on nerfing to the ground any interesting option and or ability in order to force player characters inside their predetermined cardstock cutouts... that feel more like wet paper.
I'm having difficulty even convincing my players to rejoin the playtest after they got a look at how many classes were gimped one way or another against all expectations from the previews, and how the monsters scale the same ay they hated in Starfinder

really this section of the rules is confusing as hell, also if this is the kind of changes they are gunning for at Paizo, I really don't understand what they are aiming for... they made pretty much impossible for a party or a scout to sneak on sentries and silence them or to succeed at any form of ambush...

Tried to create a pair of characters with my remaining playtesters and this aspect of extreme dilution of ancestry benefits proved to be a dealbreaker for them... they immediately compared what their character had at 1st level, elf and half orc respectively, in PF1 to what they'd currently get and, well, didn't go over well, at all.
the main point of contention for me and for them is that's there's no justification for sprading what were once frontloaded benefits trough all the character levels... specially when getting some of the last racial characteristic at level 17 is more than underwhelming

Honestly those sections of the classes descriptions are the worse pieces of stereotypical trash I've ever read.
Considering that new players usually have exactly those preconceptions, further enforcing them in those descriptions is a great disservice.
Pity that at the moment of actually building a character, class choices feel damn restrictive and ofthen a compromise between bad and worse

Honestly at this point i don't see the use of the ranger class anymore, it's only a bastardized fighter with a single trick based on studying the target and forgoing one attack each round...
Also what's the idiocy of short range penalties on bows?!
between these issues and the stripping of casting from the ranger I've lost already 2 playtesters before even starting...

So far I feel ancestries have gutted what the PF1 races were...

While the basic idea is interesting and a different way to codify what were before the variant race traits, the bastardization and assimilation to what were in PF1 racial feats meant to expand on the base racial traits of the character,result in races so damn bland and uninteresting as being simply generic mechanical traits for the character class, not at all what I and my players were awaiting from the blog previews.

Completing a character race at level 17 is an utter b@é#(=it aberration, especially considering the apparent spontaneous manifestation of what are the typical phisical traits of the race, and not sudden divinely granted or inflicted "mutations", this idiocy is further aggravated by the fact that often campaigns don't even last that far, with the end resultaping what was done with the book of advanced races, only with no rationale to the arbitrary and absolutely eccessive delay in accessing signature traits of the various species.

I resent the change in nomenclature as well, as the current term of ancestry pretends to roll race/species, culture and upbringing all in an a single term for no reason.

What I feels should have been done is:
- Physical traits typical to the race should be all available at level 1, it makes no sense popping dark vision or lowlight vision only after a character started adventuring;
- Cultural traits from the race or the upbringing until the start of the adventuring life of the character should be starting content as well...
preferably with multiple choices available based on the original PF1 alternate racial traits of the race;
- Unusual or rare abilities for the race, maybe awakened trough access to racial lore, secrets or training,should come online no further than level 10, better if by level 5 as many campaigns don't last that long nowadays...

The only races I've ever seen needing the kind of traits dilution we got in this playtest, were those in the book of advanced races and some other sources having innate acces to problematic abilities in their kit like permanet flight ability, multiple resistences, multiple spellike abilties and at will powers, on top of their full set of starting signature traits and innate abilities!

Take for example the drows evolving from run of the mill "generic darkskinned sociopathic elf with a propension for murder" to drow matriarch, with all the inerent power of the role: multiple resistances, a pletora of innate x/day spells, a consistent number of at will spellike abilities, de facto a complete racial class! - that's what my group was expecting from the ancestry system when we heard of unlocks as far as 17th level and that's what the system whoefully fails to deliver while gutting the feel and abilities inherent to the various races...
What we instead got is much less, is diluted too much over the career of the character and makes no sense in game and mechanically

@ Secret Wizard
Actually Colette's discussions come from 4chan /Traditional Games/ board and if i recall correctly from some of the most prominent discussions on pathfinder 2nd edition reddit and were ported here as the most appropriate place to convey them to Paizo.

In fact all the criticisms presented have been discussed estensively in other venues and need answers.

As far as the "linear martials vs quadratic spellcasters" argument goes, I've personally felt that, in many campaigns since D&D 3,5 and then their porting to Pathfinder, casters could do too much more compared to non casters just because each spell they obtain is an extra narrative option opposed to the fighter/barbarian/monk of "I hit it harder" progression level after level.

Wizards could outrigth buy or learn from captured grimoires MORE than their class given spells, clerics automatically knew all divine spells not against their alignment and so on, the ones screwed over were clearly all martial classes as they couldn't by RAW get in any way extra feats, proficencies or benefits than what was in their classes.

If anything martials should get more skill and class feats than casters just for the reason that casters need to dedicate most of their time to the study of magic to the detriment of more mundane studies (otherwise the pretty hefty stat investment that the multiclassing to cleric or wizard requires feels wholly unjustified)

Natural Ambition and General Training are out of scale compared to all other ancestries, already I disliked how much the extra talent humans had in 1st edition made them significantly better at most builds, but in 2nd edition the imbalance is enormous, as no other race has something as strong or versatile to rely on, while many choiches are downright mediocre