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Shield Proficiency is definitely one of the feats I would be taking on a brawler, since nothing stops a brawler from using one, and you can still flurry just fine.Quite honestly, I'm surprised the brawler is not proficient with shields. While I do understand that shields are generally not considered to be part of "brawling" per say, shield bash is listed as part of the "close" weapon group. I could easily see someone punching others and bashing with a spiked shield at the same time, or going in with a buckler and a dagger (or bayonet and buckler for that matter).As shield proficiency is a combat feat, he could technically use his martial maneuvers to do that. Probably better off taking TWD and wearing a cestus or small weapon in your offhand or using snapping turtle style. You'll keep your ac bonus that way.
It's a really cruddy prestige class from the core rule book. The only thing it has going for it is the ability to share spell slots between arcane and divine classes. And that ain't much.
For the record I think that the neck slot issue, while having merit, is way overblown on the forums. I think in the grand scheme of things, taking up the neck slot is a valid price to pay for say unarmed fighters using twf instead of flurry. Ultimately though I think its just as reasonable to disregard such builds when balancing unarmed enchants since its such a specialized circumstance.
You make a valid argument...while completely ignoring the enchanting issue. The issue has always been, and the issue you chose to ignore is monks, brawlers, etc are told "limit yourself to 1d4 damage, or pay twice as much for enchants and limit yourself to +5" there's no upside in the current ruleset. Of course you could say AoMF has the 'advantage' of enchanting the whole body. Which is fine for nonhumanoid creatures, but ever since Ultimate Combat it's been ruled that a flurry could be done with 1 hand or weapon. Hell the brawler rules specifically say it. So at the end of the day there's no effective benefit to the AoMF for people who use unarmed strikes.That's what this whole thing boils down to for me. Paizo game designers stepped in and made a rule that rendered taxing unarmed enchants obsolete, but didn't get rid of the tax. The AoMF works the way it does because "that's the way it worked in 3.5". But in 3.5 it was assumed you needed both hands to flurry so yeah it made sense to give it a penalty. Well you changed the rules, now its time to stop ignoring the artifacts left in the wake of that change.
Prefer to just houserule the AoMF costs the same and functions like a masterwork +X weapon, but can only work with unarmed strikes and not natural weapons.
Or you can just houserule fist weapons scale with unarmed damage. Either way there's no reason to impose nerfs on unarmed strike enchants anymore.
I for one am glad they get armor. I didn't want a high bab monk, I wanted a class that feels like a gritty thug, not some skilled martial artist. While there's room for polishing, I'm definitely happy with the feel of the class. If you want a monk, play a monk. If you want a guy who knocks someone's teeth out because he won't stop asking the party's bard to play Freebird, that's where the brawler comes in. If they made an archetype or variant that went armorless, you'd have to give them a stat to armor instead of a straight bonus. Like con to armor. That said I still don't like the idea.
I for one am glad they get armor. I didn't want a high bab monk, I wanted a class that feels like a gritty thug, not some skilled martial artist. While there's room for polishing, I'm definitely happy with the feel of the class. If you want a monk, play a monk. If you want a guy who knocks someone's teeth out because he won't stop asking the party's bard to play Freebird, that's where the brawler comes in.
I'm pretty sure that this question has been asked and answered alot. But how do Blood Rage and Arcane Strike interact or are they mutually exclusive? You can arcane strike any time you have a caster level and a swift action to spare. Better question is have we confirmed whether or not the Bloodrager's caster level is class-3.
Alright then, the stupid question: How do I become one of the game designers? Mechanically, these classes look pretty sound - conceptually, most of them are lacking in real creativity, without which you've got nothing, and that's what I'm good at. "You guys are uncreative, without me you've got nothing." Hell of a pitch you got there, mang.
Considering it normally takes a week to retrain a feat, I think a move action is a pretty sweet deal.Not really, if you're attempting in-combat switching. It's the difference between impossible at a week to impractical at a move action. Impractical is still a stretch. You honestly mean to tell me you think reducing yourself to a standard action for one turn is too much of a price to pay for magically swapping a feat? No offense man, but that kind of mentality is the reason game designers think players are unpleasable.
Considering it normally takes a week to retrain a feat, I think a move action is a pretty sweet deal.
I largely like like the brawler overall. Still a couple things I'm disapoint about.
Define sucks. They're as good as any high bab class when using a crossbow, but no composite weapons so no bonus to damage. Although I'd think for a guy built entirely around punching people, ranged weapons are something of a last resort. Just saying.
Why don't they just give the Brawler the Exploit Weakness ability from the Martial Artist Monk? Seems to me it would be a perfect fit. SKR already said they don't want to give them a mechanic that slows down combat. Whatever ability the brawler gets, it probably wont be one that involves an additional roll each round.
But that's not accurate. Nowhere does it say you can't use a shield to block if you aren't proficient. You're missing the meat of the discussion. A mechanic like "proficient in shields as a weapon but not armor" is unwieldy. Do you have to rules patch it so a brawler is never able to use it as armor unless proficient? If a brawler take proficiency via feat or multiclassing does he keep his ac bonus? Does he get to choose each round if he gets the ac bonus at the nonproficient penalty to attacks? There are simpler ways to build the class than introducing half proficiency.
i agree that savage is just sort of a bad name for a class in general, assuming the class names are used in charicter, it just sounds condescending. Joe: I'm Joe the monk. This is Phill the bard, Edd the cleric, and Mitch the Savage. Mitch: Well **** you too, Joe.
Problem with calling Bloodrager 'savage', 'berserker', etc. is it's not indicative of their magic ability.
I think all this shield business is going to lead them to reconsider giving brawlers proficiency in the entire close weapon group.What do you see as Paizo's reasoning to do this? They don't want brawlers to use shields, but they're part of the close weapon group so brawlers are technically proficient in them. If they go with the "proficient as a weapon but not ac" rule, they'll get to look forward to spending the next decade listening to people whine about "wah can't i use muh sheeld to block!?!?!?"
If you're still monitoring this thread at the moment, Mr. Reynolds, I'd like to hear your take on the theme issue with brawler's strike. Is the Brawler being able to magically bypass DR despite not being a mystical class an issue worth mentioning, or should we just accept that it's a necessary case of gameplay and story segregation?
Sad thing is paizo themselves made AoMF obsolete when they ruled you can make a flurry with 1 fist. It makes the "one enchant, multiple weapons" tax pointless. Yeah its possible to make a character that uses twf for unarmed fighting, but its rare enough that its not game breaking to overlook it. When I dm I have a houserule that AoMF has a base cost of 2350g, can hold up to +10 like a weapon, and only works with unarmed strikes. The classic version is renamed Amulet of Ferocious Might, works with natural weapons, and is intended for non-humanoids.
It gives players the option to use special materials or enchants to bypass dr instead of relying on I Can't Believe It's Not Ki Strike. Really my main beef with brawlers strike is thematic. Can't get over "you're not mystic but your fists are magic because REASONS!"
I dunno, I still think "Half unarmed progression, can use it with Unarmed Weapons" is a better, more flavorful way to go. I still say nerfing unarmed progression with or without weapons is unnecessary. Still think swapping brawlers strike for weapon training and allowing unarmed strike damage with trained weapons is the most elegant solution. If a player chooses to go straight unarmed, they can still take unarmed as their first level of weapon training and get a ccumulative +4 to their attack and damage. If a player wants to use weapons they can get up to 4 melee weapons with full unarmed damage.
Tell you what Paizo, anywhere you find a really compelling critique, take it over a survey. Fully 68.89% of statistics are misleading. Problem with that is just about everyone fully believes that their assessment is the most valid and well though out response there is. We have to consider that we don't necessarily represent the entirety of the playtest audience. Even within the forums its easy to get fooled into thinking you've tapped a vien of public demand. In a thread with 600-1000 posts, 'me and four other people on the last page' doesn't really constitute a massive outcry. tl;dr - Don't get mad and think the designers are ignoring the players if something you don't like ends up in the final release.
More worried that swappable feats in general are going to be a throwaway mechanic. Seems likely that a lot of players are just going to have their go-to set of feats that they use every encounter. Yeah its cool in theory to be able to switch from tank/puncher/grappler/whatever, but in practice it doesn't seem like it will come up often unless the DM tailors the adventure with that variety in mind.
I'm saying I've never seen the theorycraft and the actual gameplay add up. People whine endlessly about balance, but when game day rolls around monks are either at the top in martial damage or close enough to not matter.
You're missing a lot. If you want to find out why unarmed strikes vs weapons is so terrible, go read 1 of the thousands upon thousands of Monk threads. I'd rather not. Or rather I've skimmed said threads before, saw a writhing pit of minmaxing lunatics and stepped away. My only real gripe is the downsides of unarmed fighting are there, but they're not enough to warrant the hatred people give it. Yeah the crit profile isnt optimum, but you still have the biggest damage dice in the game and improved crit as a bonus feat option. AoMF needs to be updated to make it more attractive since paizo canonized you can flurry with one fist, so yeah there's that.I know most powergamers will never be happy until monks get a built in +10 enhancement bonus at level 3, and they all have math to back up why that's perfectly balanced. I honestly can't be made to care. I played monk variants in the last 3 games my group ran and had no problem being competative in damage output with unarmed strikes. Is there room for improvement? Yes. Is it crippling? No.
I had actually forgotten about this one. So +1 for monks as is, but the problem remains for all but those 2 archetypes. The class favors the use of unarmed strikes, the game environment favors the use of weapons, and a vanilla monk is caught between a rock and a hard place.Oh c'mon, the Sohei is hell on wheels. I'm probably missing something, but other than the AoMF having a +5 limit, I really don't see how a monk is hurt by using unarmed strikes over weapons. And even if you absolutely feel that they are, there's no reason the class should grant scaling damage to weapons if no other class does. You just make the choice, use better unarmed strikes or weapons like the other martial classes. A monk using a weapon isn't at a disadvantage compared to any other class using the same weapon. Now again that shouldn't reflect on the brawler. I think the brawler should get scaling weapon damage, but only because 1) giving them I can't believe it's not ki strike doesn't fit thematically, and 2) all the weapons in the close group are 1d4 damage. At least monks have a couple 1d8 options.
Oh c'mon, the Sohei is hell on wheels.
I definitely support this idea, and honestly think it should be that way regardless, even for monks. What's the point of using weapons at all when the damage on your unarmed strikes keeps scaling up? If you can swing that hard with just your fists, why would you deal LESS damage with a sword? Makes no sense to me. Well to be fair, Monks aren't expected to use weapons.
i recalll earlier up someone suggested stunting the damage growth a bit but also applying "unarmed damage" to all "unarmed" type weapons such as brass knuckles cestus spiked gauntlets and so on. which fixes the damage reduction issue nicely. I still say give them weapon training in a single weapon they're proficient with at each level they would gain a new brawler's strike and let them apply full unarmed dmg when using any weapon they have training in.
I don't think the warpriest shouldn't have to wait till lvl20 to treat their level as their bab when using their deity's favored weapon. It feels like it could be similar to the 4e paladin at leat in theme. A martial champion of a specific god rather than good in general. Maybe their casting could be reworked to more powerful when casting spells within their god's domains to go with weapon specific bab. Rather than the normal "high bab, low casting, low bab high casting but never both" convention, the warpriest could have high both within then restrictions of its god's domains, but low with everthing outside.
Personally one change I'd like to see is clean up the flurry mechanic to where you simply get the two weapon fighting feats as bonus feats, possibly with the addendum that they only work with unarmed strike or close weapons. With brawler having high bab there's really no need to differentiate a flurry from a full attack action and it would simplify the crunch text when it comes to whether or not brawlers can use feats with 2WF as a prereq.
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