Jon Otaguro 428's page

Maybe I don't like change, but I do not like the new store. In fact I question whether I will buy anything else from Paizo. For one, for digital content, it used to let you know what you already own. Now it doesn't. This new store is worse than the old store in functionality

Pretty sure paizo is not going to make a ruling on this until they need to reprint player core 2. So you are going to need your GM to make a ruling. My personal opinion is 3 then 4 spells known.

You never have to use the melee side. After firing off 3 barrels, you can opt to reload and fire one barrel. This keeps you using dex to hit and eventually you can get enough to do another salvo if you do 2 reloads and one shot.

Unless the belief that fighter is the worse class, all this stuff about fighters belongs in another thread.

I played a fighter in age of ashes and handily outdamaged everyone else in the party. It's far from the worst class. IMO that would be investigator.

I played a fighter with mostly max sturdy shields. I found until I got an indestructible shield, I usually shield blocked once or maybe twice per combat, otherwise the shield would break.

The shield ally doesn't do anything to make it better. Just accept you can't block every attack. If you don't like the shield ally, you can always take one of the other blessings. Speed is always useful.

I can understand the dissatisfaction. Sai, Nunchaku, and Bo Staff are all on the list of Monk weapons, so why isn't Katana?

Reading through all the various options and possibilities from this thread, this is what I am finding most useful.

If the build needs Finesse trait (dex to hit), then the Wakizashi would work. Stick to the one hand weapon and dual wield if desired.

If being 2-hand full time is fine then the Elven Curve Blade for Dex build would work.

If non-finesse is fine (strength to hit) and 1-hand with two-hand trait is important and houserules are allowed, a Temple Sword with the removal of the Trip trait and addition of the Two-Hand 1d12 trait would work (stats-wise it basically becomes a Bastard Sword with the Monk trait at that point).

There are very few ways for a monk to flurry with a d12 weapon. For balance purposes, there is no way I would approve that trait swap.

The rules don't allow weapons to be altered other than what some classes can already do (like inventor can add certain traits to weapons). The game designers decided that the setting wouldn't have any guns with magazines.

If you want to use a gun without reload, your options are air repeater or barricade buster. I am using a barricade buster in one campaign.

I play a starlit span magus and have only used sure strike once or twice and he is level 5 now. The nerf wouldn't have affected me one bit.

SuperBidi wrote:

The whole problem of the Battle Harbinger is that you can build a Magus or Summoner to just be a superior Battle Harbinger with everything the Battle Harbinger brings to the table but better. At least, some classes, like the Investigator, have unique features that make them appropriate choices in some circumstances. But for the Battle Harbinger, unless you play a game that never goes to 7, there are strictly superior choices.

For a 1-10 game, 1-7 is most of the play space. You're talking about telling a player to play for months with a concept they don't want to get up to a somewhat better instantiation of the concept they do want. In a game that may only go months.

Both may be better overall choices, but nobody wanting a divine gish is going to take Magus, and nobody wanting to spam 4+ aura spells per game day is going to get that from Summoner until at least level 6. Even then, the Summoner pays a high 'spell opportunity cost' to play that way, while a BH doesn't.

At low levels a regular warpriest kicks the ass out of the battle harbinger. Battle harbinger is just a poorly implemented idea.

Here would be my home brew battle harbinger:

1) Full martial with regular martial weapon specialization, key stat STR or DEX. Gains shield block and heavy armor. Standard martial weapon and armor progression.

2) Scrap the battle aura font and give it back the regular cleric divine font, change the language to have the spell level equal to a cleric that has regular spellcasting.

3) Remove wave spellcasting from the class. It adds archetype casting feats at level 4, 12, 18 that can be taken with class feats. Divine breath at level 8. Divine spell list with deity spells added to allowable spells. Adds scaling religion skill that increases at level 3, 7 and 15.

4) Gain bless, bane, benediction and malediction cantrips at level 1. 1 Action to cast and lasts one round. Sustain action sustains all cantrips active. Double cantrip cast feat for one action at level 8. Add free sustain feat at level 16.

The problem with the battle harbinger is that it gives up too much compared to the warpriest.

When I compare the warpriest to the battle harbinger, the battle harbinger plain sucks. In exchange for a +2 to hit at levels 5-6, 13-18 and +2 AC at levels 19-20, they trade:

4-6 highest spell slots from healing font (I consider harbinger font to be nearly useless). Lots of spell slots (wave casting vs regular casting). At level 10 you are looking at 4 spell slots (-/-/-/2/2) vs 20 spell slots
(3/3/3/3/8)

Shield Block

Master spellcasting at levels 19-20 and 10th level slots

Comparing the battle harbinger to magus, they have lack of STR/DEX key stat, loss of martial weapon specialization, lack of magus class features in exchange for the the aura font class feature which I think is a very weak class feature. I think Paizo missed the opportunity to make that aura feature more robust by having some kind of level scaling built into it.

It's not the lack of martial weapon specialization that makes the class weak; it's all of it's features in totality. I think a better battle harbinger would be take the magus class and give it divine spells instead of arcane and trade arcana for religion. Most people would probably say that is worse than the base magus, but it's still better than the battle harbinger in my opinion.

The blog post is last october. It is quite possible Paizo costs have gone up between Howl of the Wild and War of Immortals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXyWNjck3XI

Roll for combat has a lot of videos on the economy of gaming. This is one.

Books are going to keep increasing in price. I decided that physical space was why I was switching to PDFs, but probably cost would play into it somewhat now. The technology for displaying PDFs has gotten to the point that I can even read books on my phone, but still prefer to read on my PC.

I saw a youtube video from Stephen Glicker from Roll for Combat explaining the tremendous cost increases for physical books in the last few years. I am pretty sure Paizo is not making any more money by raising the prices of the books; rather defraying the increasing costs they are paying.

I am in the camp that lie doesn't take any actions. It is listed as a skill with no action cost. Also, why would lying take more actions than telling the truth?

Unless you plan on wearing full plate for bulwark and maybe get mighty bulwark if you don't enjoy being tripped, dex is still a good investment.

Prepared spellcasting needs to go.

I don't think this is going to be addressed in pc2, but the main problem with swashbuckler is finisher ending attacks for the round. I calculated situations where the swashbuckler does more damage by never using finishers and attacking multiple times per round.

I would either get rid of finishers ending attacks or add in a map reduction on finisher attacks.

You are basically picking out the less exciting things and ignoring the best things about fighter. Fighter saves are fine. Master in reflex and fortitude with evasion on both puts them ahead of all casters and some martials. Evasion on reflex is better than evasion on will. Perception is fine. I never make a character and say, it's broken because it's perception is master instead of legendary.

Fighter advances armor proficiency faster than most martials (11 and 17, instead of 13 and 19).

I think agile grace is one of the best feats in the game. Having a -3 MAP is amazing. My fighter uses unarmed with flurry of blows and can do up to 5 attacks per round at 0/-3/-6/-6/-6. Using unarmed lets you easily use a shield which has amazing fighter feats like Paragon's Guard, Quick Shield Block, Reflexive Shield, and Reactive Shield.

Fighter has other feat chains that enable builds other classes can't do.

You wouldn't want to put the rune on your main weapon. Just carry a weapon with the rune for the shapechanging effect. +1 fanged rune for 65 GP. At higher levels, that amount of gold is pretty negligible.

Of course if you have trick magic item or a caster dedication or a primal/arcane caster in the group, you could always cast or have pest form cast on you from a scroll

Magic Immunity A will-o’-wisp is immune to all spells except faerie
fire, glitterdust, magic missile, and maze.

The rules state:

Once you take a dedication feat, you can’t
select a different dedication feat until you complete your
dedication by taking two other feats from your current
archetype.

Yes - you couldn't take another dedication feat, but you can take druid archetype feats.

I think expectations from some posters for the remaster exceeds the amount of resources paizo had for the project.

The end result is not perfect because they were trying to fit all the changes in with limited resources. Most of us think what we got is fine, while some think because there could have been a better solution, that's what paizo should have done.

If you don't like the end solution, then make your own home brew rules

I don't see a big issue with schools. They put in the game the unified magical theory school which gives you one less spell per day but more flexibility and an extra feat. And if you don't like that option, you can always take spell blending and blend away all your school slots.

I also like some of the new feats like explosive arrival and secondary detonation array. The biggest thing the developers could have done for the wizard is improve the wizard focus spells to the same power as the better focus spells in the game. I think that was a missed opportunity.

I still think the remastered wizard is a class I would play; where the old wizard would have been much lower on my list of classes to play.

I'm confused about Martial Performance. It says that

Quote:

Your muse has taught you how to handle a wider variety of weapons than most bards, empowering you to effortlessly blend your performance into combat tools.

but I don't see which additional weapon proficiencies are granted.

Probably copied from the apg when warrior bards got martial weapon proficiencies.

nicholas storm wrote:

For a GM to pick out the familiar seems like metagaming. Why would all monsters attack the familiar hissing at them, ignoring the guys actively attacking them

A lot of attacks hit multiple creatures and being within 15' means they are close/far enough for both ranged and melee versions. Add to that, when you can tell a creature is actively engaging in a fight [you have to see it as a threat/a distraction for it to flank for instance], it doesn't seem odd for it to be a valid target. There is also the fact that smarter foes might actually know of familiar abilities and how they work.

Not saying the familiar should never be targeted. Just saying that if the GM's solution to the resentment familiar is just to kill it all the time, that seems metagamey.

For a GM to pick out the familiar seems like metagaming. Why would all monsters attack the familiar hissing at them, ignoring the guys actively attacking them

I view the swashbuckler as the second worst martial in the game (investigator is the worst). In agents of edgewatch, I was playing a ranger which is considered to be a weaker martial, and I was still doing a lot more damage than the swashbuckler.

It's my opinion the swashbuckler needs major changes.

To change the swashbuckler, I would:

Change the maximum panache to 3; gain 3 on critical, 2 on success, 1 on failure, zero on critical failure. Allow you to add the extra damage to having panache onto the finishing strike if you started strike with 2 or more panache.

I would remove the finisher restriction prohibiting more attacks after finisher.

Add dex to damage for at least one of the styles

Allow STR as the class attribute for gymnast.

The comparison between swashbucklers is very alike; only change is one elemental rune for a speed rune and the no finisher swashbuckler outdamages the finisher one.

The point I was trying to make is that the limitation on the current class is debilitating and can't be fixed. They need to remove the limitation on finishers that allows no further attacks in the round.

At high level +3 to hit is very easy to attain and applied to both swashbucklers; 4 actions is speed rune.

The comparison was a swashbuckler using finisher vs one not using finisher vs a highly optimized fighter. Doing 40% damage vs the top end is pretty bad in my book. But not even doing as much damage using your main class ability as not using it is worse.

Comparison high level based on a recent combat I had at level 17; this is comparing same enemy at level 18

Weapon +3 major striking, speed, +2d6 elemental
+4 strength, +2 hit circumstance, +1 status

Swashbuckler
TH 36
AC 42
Damage 55.5
Critical 0.25 0.4375
Hit 0.75 0.9375
1.375
Damage 55.5 76.3125

TH 36 32 28 28
AC 42 42 42 42
Damage 37 37 37 37
Critical Damage 74 74 74 74
Critical 0.25 0.05 0.05 0.05
Hit 0.75 0.55 0.35 0.35

Damage 37 22.2 14.8 14.8 88.8

With confident finisher swashbuckler does 76; same finisher without confident is 55.5

Without finisher attacking 4 times swashbuckler does 88.8

Fighter does 197; flurry of blows, agile grace, feral mutagen

Finishing strike extra damage is so bad, that a swashbuckler does more damage full attacking than doing finishing strike in many high level real combats. If a class using it's key ability is worse than not using it's key ability - this proves the class is broken.

As I said earlier, the only way to fix swashbuckler is to remove finishers from the class.

One attack per round makes swashbuckler damage awful; even after confident finisher. Saying the swashbuckler contributes when their damage at high level using confident finisher is still like 40% of an optimized fighter.

Easiest remake of swashbuckler would remove finisher from the class. They could easily reword finishers to something else and just put the flourish tag on it.

I believe they are going to add spell attack items like the gate attenuator to casters (capped at +2). They could add in text to say that it only works if targeting ac, so as not to interact with the shadow signet.

For me it's not close that spontaneous casters are better than prepared casters. Spontaneous casters never waste spell slots and in pf2e slots are much more precious than in pf1e

If she doesn't have the ride skill feat she would need to make a check for every command (animal companions don't need checks). Without the ride feat, it's not very useful to have a mount that isn't a companion

I would second that it's better for her to take a dedication that gives her an animal companion

You don't need dex on a magus. 12 Dex is enough for medium armor to hit ac cap and if you play high levels, you can always go sentinel to get bulwark.

We will never go back to pf1e, because pf2e is so much easier to gm. Adventures can be run in pf2e without gms needing to rebalance things to challenge players.

It's still a very good archetype. You get access to cantrips of any type, a familiar and access to life boost. It's my favorite spell casting archetype

I have done the math and the swashbuckler does better damage not doing finishers if the swashbuckler does one attack per round. It's pretty sad that their main class ability reduces their damage.

Really suggests the class needs a big redesign and not tweaks

Kind of moot since the psychic will rarely spend focus points on daze once he gets shatter mind. I agree with Hammerjack on daze damage.

I think the swashbuckler class is a mess and should be redesigned from ground up.

For my fighter with alchemist dedication, I like to start combat by drinking a numbing tonic. Getting 10 temporary hp per round makes it less likely to have to be healed in combat

You probably want to get a shootist bandolier to reduce the reload time to 2 actions

It seems like a lot of Paizo errata are focused on nerfing. I would prefer buffing weak than nerfing strong.

For Swashbuckler, I see 2 possible buffs (but certainly not both of them simultaneously):

- Grant Panache on a failed check. Panache building is painful because it's random. Granting Panache even if you fail the check would remove the clunkyness of the class. And after all, you are panachey for even trying to do it with panache.
- Remove MAP on Finishers, so they finally earn their name. It would remove the whole nonsense of making a single attack per round because your last attack needs to have no MAP as it's also the most damaging one. The class would be much more explosive: High risk high gain, which is quite expected from a Swashbuckler.

That would make the class go from crap to pretty good. A class that attacks once per round doesn't work

In the podcast I saw paizo said you can start using martial proficiency for rogues and simple proficiency for wizards. You don't have to wait for the remaster books

I think people here are expecting more changes than what will actually happen. I believe most class changes will be minor except for what is needed for no alignment and bestiary changes.

To build a STR based caster, you want full plate because of bulwark. Otherwise, your reflex saves will be bad. You will want to do boosts to STR CON WIS CHA.

To go full plate, you have two options - sentinel or champion. Sentinel has the advantage of auto scaling proficiency (champion requires you to take a L14 feat diverse armor) and opens up mighty bulwark which gives +4 bonus to all reflex saves instead of +3 to only damage spells.

Best path for sentinel is human race to start with armor proficiency through versatile heritage or general feat. If you stay with dwarf, you would need to take armor proficiency at L3, sentinel at L4. If you go with this plan, start with

S16 D12 C12 I10 W10 CH18. Don't play an oracle without 18CHA. Problem with staying with dwarf is L4 feat cost could be used for diverse access. If you are human, you use sentinel as L2 feat.

It's much easier to build a DEX based caster than a STR caster. If you want to build a STR based caster, expect to give up on some role play options such as what race you start as.