Ludovicus's page

Secret Wizard wrote:

It makes no sense to me that Flurry of Blows gets a cooldown and Twin Weapon Flurry doesn't.

I swear I'm not trying to derail with discussion, but I think a clarification here is necessary bc all the Flurry feats I found in short order had exactly the same cooldown. Flurry of Blows, Two-Weapon Flurry (fighter, dual warrior), and Twin Takedown (ranger) all have the Flourish trait. Is there another ability you're referring to?

Here you go, champ: https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=6215

I'm sure this has been raised before, since the issue is pretty obvious (which makes it all the more impressive that the devs somehow dropped the ball on this not only when writing Player Core 2, but after their first errata pass). But, the swashbuckler's Illimitable Finisher feat needs to be fixed in (at least) two respects, both arriving from the (apparently legal) possibility of selecting itself as a finisher used as part of the action.

--) As part of the action you use for Illimitable Finisher, you Step, then perform a "single one-action finisher." If that finisher is itself Illimitable Finisher, you can Step, then select another finisher. Nothing prevents you from repeating the process ad infinitum, thereby taking any number of Steps before finally Striking.
--) It's completely unclear whether the feat's Fortune trait prevents--or is even intended to prevent--you from using Illimitable Finisher as the second finisher you get to make if you recover your panache upon using the first one. This is because individual Fortune effects normally apply to one roll, which in this case would be the first Strike you make as part of the action (such that part of the Fortune effect that applies here is the ability to proc a second finisher).

It must be exhausting to care this much about stakes so low.

Okay, this is kind of getting into flamewar territory, so I'm out. But just to be clear: in all sincerity, it's not that I care a ton about the quality of Paizo's output (which I actually think has been on an overall upward trajectory over the past couple years) so much as that I'm a little weirded out to see people doing all these elaborate mental gymnastics rather than just admitting that something the devs did sucks.

Plus, Unicores statement here appears to boil down to "well if they release better stuff later, just use that stuff". Which is just power creep, and its a weird stance to have on a game that prides itself on "balance" and avoiding "ivory tower design". Releasing mediocre things that are later replaced with shinier, better things helps with neither.

Right! And we'd be paying twice for what we should have paid for once!

So we're supposed to hold our noses and pretend that the books we're paying for are worth full price when they're printed with material far enough below par that only a few players will ever use it?

Also just wanted to add that I posted before seeing this, which (along with the other stuff in the comment) makes the same point I was trying to, but more clearly and insightfully!

Badly underpowered spells don't break the game, and don't need to take up time and attention away from new, better material. Boosting bad options is squarely the realm of homebrew stuff.

To my mind, this suggests that you don't think the devs have a responsibility to fix these things. I disagree.

Playing Pathfinder as a PC (as opposed to a GM) is premised on the idea that, if you play competently and are not extremely unlucky, you should be able to (a) meaningfully contribute to overcoming challenges while (b) playing a character who feels heroic. Badly underpowered material doesn't do this; that is, it doesn't deliver the results we reasonably expect from the products we pay for. People who sell defective products are responsible for fixing them; there is nothing at all wrong with holding the developers accountable in this respect.

A Sure Strike spellstrike will be about as accurate as a mythic Strike (less at some levels/AC targets, more at others) and do more damage if it hits with a good spell, just at a considerable action cost.

So, as a tactic, it does less damage per round and is harder to bring into play. But yes, tell me more how it "seems fine"!

It says "another" finisher, so you'd need to pick something other than illimitable a second time.

That might well been the intent, but "another" doesn't clearly imply that, since it often (typically?) means another (potentially identical) token of the same type. For example, suppose I have a plate of different kinds of cookies, and you eat an oatmeal cookie from it; if I then say, "have another cookie," nobody would think I was implying that you shouldn't take another oatmeal cookie.

Personally, I think the devs thought giving Illimitable Finisher the Fortune trait would provent using it recursively (as well, I suppose, as preventing you from using it with Perfect Finisher, which would otherwise be the obviously best choice in most situations). However, I think it would've been much clearer (and better all-around) if Illimitable Finisher were instead written like Flamboyant Leap--that is, as an action that let you use a finisher withotu being a finisher itself.

"I levelled up and my armor got tougher for some reason" is frankly weird and discordant with how the genre plays.

Shhh, don't tell them about adding your proficiency bonus to your AC!

So I don't think it is fair to call it power creep when the ceiling hasn't really changed.

Exactly. Power creep occurs when the power level required to be competitive in a game increases, with the result that options that had been competitive no longer are. (This is why power creep is so common in CCGs like Magic: to stay profitable, most of these games need hardcore players to keep buying cards, which they wouldn't do if they could stay competitive with a twenty-year-old-deck.)

In PF2, this would happen if they made wizards and rangers significantly stronger than fighters, or if they made most classes stronger enough for encounter design to be thrown out of whack (that is, if monsters that were supposed to be challenging for a typical party of a given level generally became quite easy--which happened a lot in 3.5 and PF1). But that's not what's happening here--what's happening here is that options that previously had been below the bar have now been brought up closer to it.

Swashbucklers can't perform what I at least see as the core of that fantasy: lightning bladework that has crippled the target before a bond one liner and the coup de grace

This is a good description of the braggart swashbuckler's style. But, if you really prioritize "crippling" a target, I assure you that the thief rogue will fill the fantasy perfectly well.

Now they are a long setup single heavy attack class which is...a choice I guess?

No, they're not. The bravado trait makes getting panache much easier (and, hence, no longer dependent on potentially long and painful setups), and it's usually perfectly viable--indeed, often optimal--to use your finisher as your second attack in a round rather than your first.

Like, is the game actually made better by telling Flurry Rangers/Monks (who don't plan to do Trips/Grabs)/Rogues/etc that they can all just ignore STR completely with little downside? Not really, no.

Being worse at Trips and Grabs is a downside. Morever, you're neglecting the fact that non-agile finesse weapons are generally worse than other non-agile weapons: the rapier is worse than the pick; the dueling sword is worse than the falcata. Dex builds would still do less damage; just not as much.

Right now they're just being forced into having to actually prioritize what's more important to them and they'd rather just get benefits without that choice instead.

Giving dex to damage would narrow down the selection of good builds.

Both of your are saying that Dex to damage would reduce interesting build choices, when in fact it would increase them. It would give Dexterity-based classes more latitude in choosing between Strength, Intelligence, and Charisma for their fourth stat to increase (after the necessary Dex, Con, and Wis), and make Dexterity-based melee builds a viable (though far from dominant) option for fighters.

I can see several problems with that hypothetical ability. Not sure why it would have the Fortune trait, for one.

But yes, if that ability did exist, then the result could be pre-calculated and you would probably know in advance if it would be a successful Strike or not. Which would cause a lot of problems with other Fortune effects being able to work. Which is why this hypothetical ability shouldn't have the Fortune trait.

So I'm still going to go with my previous idea. If you roll the d20 for Devise a Strategem, that is when the Fortune effect happens. There are a few ways to avoid using that roll if you don't like it. Using a different Fortune ability shouldn't be one of them. That is the entire point of putting the Fortune trait on the action.

I'm not sure why you find the hypothetical ability so weird. After all, it was based on the monk's 19th level feature, which is indeed a fortune effect.

But to your substance: you're giving your judgments about how you think the rules, intuitively, should work--about what you think is the "point" of them. And nobody is disputing those judgments--I essentially expressed them myself, in my last paragraph! But the question isn't about how the rules should work--it's about what they actually say. And you haven't cited a single bit of text to support your view that my interpretation is wrong.

SharedStratagem wrote:

The topic was touched on preMaster in this thread. As in this thread, the reasoning is largely caught up in the imagery of DaS, neglecting the (counter-)arguments for electability between DaS and Sure Strike.

The counter-argument being that since you have rolled the die roll for the check and seen the result, that Fortune effect has already happened. You don't get to see that result and then elect to use a different Fortune effect instead hoping to get a better result.

Similarly, you can't roll a Reflex save, then Hero Point the roll, then decide that neither of those rolls are something that you like and elect to use Cat's Luck and roll that and choose to use your favorite of the two Fortune effects after seeing the roll results.

Right. But compare DaS to the following imaginary ability:

Assured Attack <one action>

traits: Concentrate, Fortune

You empty your mind of all distractions and allow your training to guide you. Treat the d20 result for the attack roll for your next Strike as a 10.

Suppose I use Assured Attack and then (for whatever reason) cast Sure Strike, before finally Striking with my third action. I think it's clear that I get to pick which Fortune effect applies--either I can roll 2d20 and pick the highest, or I can take 10. What I can't do is double-dip by rolling the 2d20, getting results I don't like, and then take 10 by picking Assured Attack as the Fortune effect to apply. SharedStratagem's point, I take it, is that Devise a Strategem can reasonably be interpreted the same way, except that the number to be substituted for your d20 roll is random instead of fixed. And this strikes me as right: at any rate, I'm not aware of any justification in the rules text for thinking that randomness makes a difference in this respect.

Having said that, I certainly agree that there's a clear intuitive sense that using Sure Strike to preempt a bad DaS result amounts to using two Fortune effects to manipulate the same roll in the way the rules are meant to disallow; the problem is that the wording for the Fortune trait is just too imprecise to decisively support a corresponding ruling. (So I think SharedStratagem is clearly right that the issue ultimately comes down to GM judgment.)

Apologies if this has already been discussed, but I have some questions about how the investigator's Devise a Strategem interacts with the
Fortune trait. Imagine two scenarios:

SCENARIO ONE. I use Devise a Strategem and get a roll I don't like. Fortunately, I'm a tengu with the Eat Fortune feat. So I spend my reaction to use it, which applies the Misfortune trait "to the same roll the triggering effect would have," cancelling out the effect of Devise a Strategem. As a result, I roll for my next Strike normally.

SCENARIO TWO. I use Devise a Strategem and get a roll I don't like. Fortunately, I can cast Sure Strike. So I use next action to cast the spell, which, like Devise a Strategem, both has the fortune trait and applies to my next attack roll. So, now the attack roll for my next Strike has two fortune effects that apply to it, and "if multiple fortune effects would apply, you have to pick which to use." So I pick the effect of Sure Strike, and make two new d20 rolls instead of using the old, bad one.

Now, it's not clear to me that either scenario is consistent with the rules-as-intended, since presumably the intent of giving Devise a Strategem the fortune trait is to minimize shenanigans. But as a GM I'd certainly allow them, both because I believe that a player who finds a non-obvious way to circumvent the limits of such an ability deserves to be thrown a bone, and--more importantly--because I think they're consistent with the rules-as-written. But what do other people think? Am I reading the rules correctly?

Squiggit wrote:

The thing is, nothing about anything you said would stop being true if Outwit was a good subclass.

Just for comparison, an 18-Strength Flurry/Precision Ranger using the classical Hunt Prey + Twin Takedown + Strike does 5% more damage on average during its 16 first levels than the same Ranger making just 3 bland Strikes with a Greatsword. So calling out Outwit without criticizing Flurry and Precision is a bit buyist. Outwit is roughly as bad as Flurry and Precision, the Ranger subclass has a much lower impact than the Fighter proficiency or the Barbarian Rage.

If I had to review the Ranger, I'd buff all 3 subclasses. Precision is the only one "competitive" before high level only because it synergizes well with the action economy enhancers that Hunted Shot and Twin Takedown are.

You do know that Flurry and Precision rangers can use greatswords, too, right?

There's always gonna be classes, builds or party comps that won't jive together. And that's perfectly okay.

Of course there are perfectly good reasons why someone might want to play an Outwit ranger: they might like the flavor, or just want a challenge. And of course, if someone does want to play an Outwit ranger, nobody should step on their fun. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about whether the subclass is well-designed.

I think people are sleeping on the Outwit Ranger (just the way an outwit ranger would want it to be, so maybe by design).

I think the class could probably use a little bit more support for the deception skill, but the support for recalling knowledge has always been strong and the support for intimidation with Eerie Evirons in Dark Archive is exceptionally cool. Intimidating a foe from hiding and then aiming at a target with a -3 to -4 AC is huge. Now imagine there are other members of the party that are snipers or rogues who are also hiding, and the potential for winning a fight in the first round has probably never been higher.

What if I told you that rangers could also use those skills with other edges, which actually improved their attacks?

Lots of other options give circumstance bonuses to Intimidate--usually, without costing actions. For instance, Intimidating Prowess is right there.

I'll grant you, however, that part of the problem is the developers' excessive conservativism about bonus stacking. It would hardly break the game for Outwit to give untyped bonuses instead. I doubt this would be enough to make the edge worth taking from a strategic standpoint, but it would make it a bit more interesting.

My Foundry players recently discovered that I use an automated timer to remind me to give out a hero point each hour.

Soon after, everything in our games slowed down so that our two hour sessions have more than doubled to five hours!

At first I thought maybe it was just from waning interest or distractions from life events during play. However, one of the players reached out to me, concerned, saying that multiple others are deliberately dragging their feet so that they can get more hero points out of me for the same number of encounters, thereby increasing their odds of success on important rolls. They don't see it as cheating since the rules allow for this, but at least one player regrets losing our quick encounters.

Has anyone else encountered this player phenomenon?

Definitely time for an OOC conversation: why do your players feel the need to eke out this small advantage, even at the cost of so much time and fun for everyone? It's possible your encounters are just too hard; it also might be the system's fault, since PF2 is both full of trap options, and very punitive toward players who don't play the way you're "supposed" to. Either way, the solution may well be just to give out more hero points, or otherwise tweak the math in the players' favor.

Stop playing with terrible people.

This sort of blanket moralism is so 2018. In the parlance of those censorious times, "do better."

Fun fact from the new errata posted today: Ki Spells are now being referred to as Qi Spells!

Anyone have a view why they might've changed it? As far as I know, qi is the accepted transliteration from Chinese; ki, from the Japanese--neither is more "authentic" or whatever than the other. (I suppose the monk trope draws more from China--or, really, Hong Kong--than Japan, though; maybe that's it.)

4) Commander, from what my players have told me feels pretty great right out of the box, for a completely new player i would probobly advize them toward a simpler class like fighter, barb or rogue, but i would put commander in the mid complexity teir, with things like magus or a prepared caster, but it certanly would not be something i would activly advize a new player avoid when cutting their teeth on the game like alchemist or orical.

Thanks for the detailed & helpful reply! I wasn't clear enough about this last question: I wanted to bring to mind the kind of player who didn't need anything simple--indeed, who welcomed mechanical complexity! Rather, the point of having them be new to the group is that (in order to ensure they feel welcome, and make it easier for them to vibe with the group) you want to make sure they're playing something that feels awesome, and that felt awesome for everyone else to play with.

I'm skeptical that, without really significant and creative redesign, the new classes will inspire nearly as much as trust in this regard as the comparatively well-designed PH classes.

It's really shocking to me that people are saying "why bother, the Champion exists" since a thing I have wanted since the original PF2 playtest is "the ability to play a Champion without being beholden to a God." Not just for atheist champions, but for like animist champions (but definitely also for those), or reincarnationist champions, or ancestor-worshipping champions, or "I don't even think about religion" champions. Not a reskinned oracle or something, an actual honest to goodness martial with good defensive abilities.

I figure the Guardian should be the class I have been wanting.

I've felt the same way, for just as long! Here is an imaginary conversation two developers could have had (or one developer might have had with themselves) that may represent the kind of thinking that got us to this point:

DEVELOPER A: "Hey, now that we think about it, there's really nothing about the core chassis of this class that requires the character to be religious, and we'd be able to easily accomodate a more diverse range of fantasy archetypes if we covered all that stuff with some feat chains. So we'll have one set of options for players who want their character to simp for some weird space ghost, and another for ones who just want to play a cool dude who tanks hits in heavy armor and wallops anyone who tries to hurt their friends. Sound good?"

DEVELOPER B: "No! If we do THAT, who will force players to appreciate my ~*~setting~*~?!"

DEVELOPER A: "Okay, whatever, but can we at least still let champions pledge themselves to ideals, rather than entities? After all, that's what we've been doing so far--we explicitly allowed it in the first edition, after all--and lots of people seem to appreciate it."

DEVELOPER B: "...no."

(I don't know WHERE I got the idea!)

Combat Challenge <free action>
Trigger: Your most recent action was to make a melee attack.
In combat, it's dangerous to ignore a guardian. You mark the target you just attacked. The mark lasts until the end of your next turn. While a target is marked, it takes a -2 circumstance penalty to any attack roll that doesn't include you as a target. A creature can be subject to only one mark at a time. A new mark supersedes a mark that was already in place.

Basically the title. I think the increased to-hit and save DC is wayyyy too punishing the Guardian, and you're more likely to crit-fail any spells or rider effects that could literaly cripple the Guardian

The tradeoff aside, I see no reason why Taunt needs to allow a saving throw. After all, you're not forcing the target to attack you; you're just getting in its face and nettling it a bit. Why not let that be a thing Guardians are just able to do?

Looks like you were playing with pretty atypical parties!

It's not surprising the commander(s) had a great time with three other martial characters (and, in the first two parties, two damage dealers) to give strikes to, or that the guardian felt powerful in a party where everyone had good armor proficiency and at least 8 base hit points per level

So, three questions.

First, how do you think they would fare in a more typical party, where one or both of the other martials are replaced with casters?

Second, do you think the party as a whole would have been more effective if (a) the commander had been replaced by a fighter or bard, or (b) the guardian had been replaced by a retributive strike champion, or just a fighter with the champion archetype?

Third (to combine the previous two), let's say you're not stacking martial characters specialzied in single-target damage, but instead are adding to (again) a more typical party--you have:

(a) one Core Rulebook martial (leaving it open which),
(b) one squishy caster (i.e., anyone with a base 6 hp/level), and
(c) another character who's either a somewhat less squishy caster or a non-caster more focused on support than dealing or receiving damage (i.e. an investigator or alchemist).

So, final queestion: the fourth character is played by an experienced gamer who's comfortable with abstraction and tactical challenges, but who hasn't played with you before: because of this, it's especially important to you to make sure they have a good time, and feel effective both individually and as part of a well-functioning team. Given the importance of this aim, do you think it's really likely that you would advise them to play one of these new classes, rather than a champion, fighter, ranger, or rogue?

Since I'm that kind of nerd, I ran the numbers in Excel. tl;dr is that Chain Blast is fine.

It's absolutely worth using against three or more targets, and situationally useful against two. (Against two targets, Chain Blast does provide an overall increase in expected damage if you have at least a 60% chance to hit. In most cases, however, this increase is small enough that focusing fire on a single target will usually still be a better idea.) I expect this is exactly what the devs intended.

For more detail: when you use Chain Blast, your chance to get an nth attack (not necessarily hit with it) is equal to (your chance to hit)^(n - 1). So, 100% for the first attack, since you always at least get to attack once; (your chance to hit) for a second attack, since you get it if and only if your first attack hits; (your chance to hit) squared for a third attack, and so on. Each attack you get is actually worth a number of expected hits equal to its chance to hit plus its chance to crit. So, I think this analysis is basically right:

Now let's calculate the chances of Chain Blast hitting considering that each sequential attack had to hit the previous one to be attempted:

1st hit chance on target: 65% (15% to crit on this individual roll)
2nd hit chance on target: 42% (15% to crit on this individual roll)
3rd hit chance on target: 27% (15% to crit on this individual roll)
4th hit chance on target: 18% (15% to crit on this individual roll)
5th hit chance on target: 12% (15% to crit on this individual roll)

Thus, taking crits into account, Chain Blast with a 65% chance to hit (8 or better on the d20) gets approximately 1.32 expected hits worth of damage against two targets, 1.66 against three, 1.88 against four, and 2.02 against five. By contrast, attacking twice normally gets 1.25 expected hits (65% hit/15% crit for the first, 40% hit/5% crit for the second). Furthermore:

And even if your Clain Blast fails on the 1st attack and you lost 2 actions, your 3rd action is still at -5 MAP, so you can try it the same way you can try a 2nd attack after a normal Impulse or...

This turns out to make a significant difference. If you're making a third attack, an 8 to hit means you have a 35% chance to make that third attack at –5 rather than –10. This turns out to be worth another 0.09 expected hits (all told, you get 1.61 expected hits compared to 1.45 for attacking normally). So, in both cases, Chain Blast is indeed better, but not by a huge amount.

So assuming your flurry ranger with agile melee weapons against a standard on level opponent will you end up doing more damage with two actions double slicing or attacking 3 times (hunted strike).

I was going to try and do the maths myself using a high level dc to see but suspected someone has already done it and I could reap the benefits by asking ?

The three attacks with Twin Takedown do more expected damage than Double Slice until you need a 16 or higher to hit with your best attack—something that will only happen if you're badly debuffed and fighting a significantly higher-level enemy (at which point, you shouldn't be attacking at all).

However, it's worth noting that because the difference is relatively small, the damage you would do as a precision ranger with Double Strike is very close to the damage you'd do with flurry and Twin Takedown—in fact, before you get your first striking rune, precision is definitely better.

In general, a good rule of thumb is that flurry is only better when you can spend at least three actions attacking.

On Striking Spell, we’ll just have to wait and see. Personally, I wouldn’t mind Striking Spell having a more limited usage. Could mean we’d get some ‘lesser spellstrike abilities’ that worked similarly to it, but without the potency of carrying a big spell to give that Magus feeling. Maybe something like some have suggested in the Swordmage discussion. However, nothing seems to be set in stone and I’m sure the final version of the class will turn out great.

I agree. And though I'm probably in the minority on this, I would be very happy to see the Magus go all in on the nova playstyle, at least as far as damage is concerned. Arguably, one niche not yet represented in the PF2 classes is limited-daily-use single-target damage (a sort of dedicated-boss-killer role), which strikes me as a natural niche for the magus.

As one of the people pretty critical about the playtest versions, I just want to say how much I appreciate this excellent dev commentary—I found it really illuminating to hear how you guys are taking into account community feedback, what your reasons were for the original designs, and what's guiding your deliberations about how to go forward.

One of the major drivers for the playtest version was making it highly flexible to allow for using a wide variety of spells (compared to, say, Eldritch Shot) and let you use your stored spell with other abilities (like Flurry of Blows or Power Attack).

So that's why you guys didn't give Striking Spell the Flourish trait (in exchange for, e.g. letting you Strike as part of Casting A Spell). Makes sense!

One thing you might want to consider, if you're not already: what about letting the magus use feats or synthesis options to select optional, stronger but more restrictive ways of using Spell Striking? For instance, you might have low-level feats with a similar design function to the ranger's Twin Takedown or Hunted Shot. And for that matter, they might have similar mechanics: to nicely simulate the 1e magus, for instance, you might have a 1st-level feat that let you use a single (Flourish) action to Strike twice with a one-handed weapon, but only if it's holding a stored spell (and only if you have a free hand).

I said this before, but I feel like a simpler, more elegant way to do that without relying on ability substitutions or anything like that is to allow Stiking Spell to carry over the weapon's attack roll bonus to the spell attack roll or DC. That way, the disparity become null or only -1, but only when the magus is using their core feature, and it fits with the flavor of using your weapon as a focus for your magic.

This would be fine, too.

There's a minor bonus of being able to make spell attacks with the addition of your item bonus.

No, there isn't.

You can tell the devs it's not okay without basically insulting their competence, I think.

Remember: the devs aren't our friends. Nor are they doing this for free, or in their spare time. We not only pay their salaries, but go out of our way to provide thoughtful written feedback—something on which most companies place considerable value. We don't owe them; they owe us.

The playtest magus strikes many of us, me included, as badly designed in a way that should've been obvious: it should not have been released in its current state. Maybe we are missing some important nuance, and the magus is better than we think. If so, it would be good to have that explained. Otherwise: if you are paying someone for their work, and they offer a really shoddy prototype for some product, isn't it legitimate to clearly express your disappointment?

The magus's spell attack roll and DC is more or less within sight of a caster's at low levels, but drops off precipitously later. The problem is worst at very high levels, once the caster gets their apex item. (The magus is 3 points behind then, and 4 points behind at 20th.) To mitigate this, the magus should get to use their spellcasting ability score for attacks, which can be flavored as a kind of arcane bond.

Ludovicus wrote:

coyotegospel wrote:

Also, it is their right to not announce a number. Even 0.5% is better than 0%

Without announcing a number, they shouldn't have said this at all. If I tell all my friends that I'm donating a portion of my income to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and that portion turns out to be $1, all I've done is try to deceive people into thinking I'm virtuous. Expressions of commitment are only meaningful if the commitments are meaningful.

There are many for whom even $1 is a significant donation to make from what little 'income' they may have...

(Not everyone is fortunate enough to be in a financial position where one can consider $1 to be a pittance.)

Respectfully,

--C.

** spoiler omitted **

Thanks. I apologize for the example; I recognize that, for many people, budgeting is a nerve-racking and depressing exercise in stretching every dollar as far as it can go. However, while I get that the last thing you want is to make this thread even more fraught than it is, it may also be worth considering that (a) Paizo is not among these people, but is rather a for-profit corporation, and (b) giving for-profit corporations a pass on whether they are actually materially helping those in need in a meaningful way, as opposed to making superficial gestures at providing this help, may not be the best way to express sympathy and solidarity with the people you describe.

Also, it is their right to not announce a number. Even 0.5% is better than 0%

Without announcing a number, they shouldn't have said this at all. If I tell all my friends that I'm donating a portion of my income to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and that portion turns out to be $1, all I've done is try to deceive people into thinking I'm virtuous. Expressions of commitment are only meaningful if the commitments are meaningful.

Handwraps.

Yep. Handwraps improve unarmed attacks, and wind crash strikes are unarmed attacks.

I eventually want to be able to play Champions who aren't tied to deities at all (think about people from cultures who worship something other than deities.) So making it impossible to do the neutral champions this way doesn't sit well with me.

Yes.

Look, two things are true of champions as they stand. They're (a) the only real "hard" defender in PF2, and (b) they require that one be super virtuous, according to a hard-coded prior interpretation of a good alignment, and swear obedience to a weird, super-powerful magical being.

Many players, one can only assume, would be really excited to do (a) but regard (b) as dealbreakers. One can only assume Paizo would recognize this, and want to accommodate these players! And yet instead the APG is giving us evil champions, which—being alignments many GMs and adventure paths just ban—are unlikely to see play!

Bring on the hard-bitten, cynical, atheist mercenaries, I say!

Some small notes:

--) You might state straight up that despite being so lackluster, Hunter's Aim is worth retraining to at high levels, because of the excellent feat for which it's a prerequisite.

--) I'd grade Relentless Stalker, which isn't hard to access in organized play and (apart from Hunter's Aim as a means of qualifying for Targeting Shot) may be the only 2nd level ranger feat that's worth taking instead of an archetype's dedication feat.

--) Deadly Aim is a one-star trap option. Run the numbers: you'll find it's a net loss in pretty much every realistic case (unless you're a high-level ranger inexplicably using a bow without striking runes), and indeed worse for precision rangers rather than better (since the damage bonus makes up a smaller proportion of their damage overall, the accuracy penalty hurts more). While statistically bad accuracy-for-damage trades can occasionally be useful in "go big or go home" cases where damaging but not killing a target isn't any better than missing it, even this doesn't apply because Deadly Aim is also cutting into your crit chances.

--) Second Sting should be at least 3 stars. Again, run the numbers: despite their reduced MAP, even flurry rangers will generally have at least a 50% chance to fail on their third and subsequent attacks, and close to that on their second. Especially if they can get circumstance bonuses to damage (e.g. from a sawtooth saber) this is significant addition. Look at it this way: if you need a 12 or better to hit, the Second Sting adds exactly as much expected damage as a feat that just doubled your static damage bonuses. (Counting crits, each attack has a .5 chance to fail and delivers .5 expected hits.) And anyone would jump at the chance to take a feat that doubled their static damage bonuses! To be fair, the feat's usefulness does drop off somewhat at extremely high levels because you can't combine it with Impossible Flurry, but this hardly obsoletes it since Impossible Flurry (while enabling more or less the highest DPR in the game) is by no means usable every round.

explain that chart on anydice to me plz, what am i lookin at I'm dumb

you mentioned it being better since crits but above somebody said +5 and you say +1?

Sure. You're looking at the difference you get in expected hits (with crits counting double) over three actions, between (a) casting true strike and then striking twice (at –0 and –5), versus (b) striking three times (at –0, –5, and –10). Here's another link that might make it more concrete: anydice.com/program/19aea

And for the record: if you're REALLY looking to have fun with true strike as a warpriest, you don't worship Shizuru. You worship Ragathiel.

That's because Ragathiel likewise grants true strike but ALSO (a) grants haste too and more importantly (b) lets you take harmful font, enabling the following sequence:

(1) cast true strike,
(2) use Channel Smite,
(3) strike at –5.

Voila: you've now used true strike to add a lot of accuracy (and usually crit chance, with the right setup) to your harm effect as well as just to your strike, and thanks to haste even done so without trading away your second-best attack.

The value of True Strike is tied to how difficult the initial roll is to succeed at. The more difficult the attack roll, the greater a bonus it works out to be as far as changing the percentages in your favor. That is why it can’t be quantified in a single static bonus amount. The higher level you get though, the wire the war priest skews towards “less accurate” than expected attack bonuses and the more it benefits from True Strike.

That's true in 5e (up to 50% anyway, after which the marginal benefit drops off), but not really in PF2, since at higher accuracy true strike also greatly increases your chance to crit. (If you hit on a 6+ and hence crit on a 16, for instance, true strike increases your chance to crit by 75%!)

For the curious, here's a simple program that calculates how much true strike helps you (in terms of expected hits, with crits counting double) for a three-action attack sequence (i.e. you either cast true strike and strike twice, or just strike three times): anydice.com/program/19ae8

Basically, true strike is indeed quite good for warpriests, who really shouldn't be hitting the accuracy levels where true strike isn't a benefit unless they're attacking a super-low-level target—over the course of a turn, it's roughly comparable to a +1 to attack rolls that stacks with everything. Note too that this analysis doesn't account for effects like deadly (e.g. from the Shizuru warpriest's katana), which makes true strike even better.

Can anyone who has the book yet tell me if you be LN while worshipping Achaekek?

It's a cool rune for any martial MC caster. They have high weapon hit chance and mostly low-level spells anyway.

Also a nice spell to store is Ray of Enfeeblement. When you activate it on a crit, at least enfeebled 1 is guaranteed.

Right! Though the low save DC still holds it back at higher levels. (I really think it was a bad idea to have magic item DCs not scale. While many items stay useful throughout a character's career, others—which are usually been priced as comparably powerful to them when they first appear—are only functional in tiny periods of the game. They probably shouldn't have bothered even putting the vorpal rune in the game, for instance.)

Actually...

Spell-storing wrote:

A spell-storing rune creates a reservoir of eldritch energy within the etched weapon. A spellcaster can spend 1 minute to cast a spell of 3rd level or lower into the weapon.

Unless you have truly awesome low-level spells that don't need to be heightened beyond 3rd level to be worth the effort, this rune is worthless at the time it becomes available.

Did you read the examples I gave, or do you not think an automatic 8d12 electricity damage after a crit is worth the effort at 13th level?

And I'm not even sure willingly lowering a focus spell's level instead of using it fully heightened is possible.

RAW, this is probably right, though.

Heck, why bother with crits? You could store basically any spell you want (e.g. shocking grasp) and after any successful hit you 3rd-action* spell attack that auto-hits.

Sure, the crit effect is amazing, but a nearly-free-spell-hit at the right moment can still be really strong.

*If you've only spent 1 so far, its your second, but you were going to use your second anyway, and that one's now your third.

Sure. Depending on the situation, I'd bet this is often the right idea.

The spell-storing rune is easy to overlook. It's kind of awkward to use and scales badly: a 3rd-level, 30 DC spell seems like a questionable use of an action at 13th level and only gets worse from there. But notice:

Activate Single Action command; Requirements On your previous action this turn, you hit and damaged a creature with this weapon; Effect You unleash the stored spell, which uses the target of the triggering attack as the target of the spell. This empties the spell from the weapon and allows a spell to be cast into it again. If the spell requires a spell attack roll, the result of your attack roll with the weapon determines the degree of success of the spell, and if the spell requires a saving throw, the DC is 30.

The bolded part is bolded because it means that if you're willing to wait for a critical hit with your weapon, you can immediately follow up with a guaranteed critical with your spell. As you might expect, this has predictably cool applications. For instance, with a 3rd-level slot shocking grasp does 8d12 damage and change, which for one action is incredible at 13th level and never gets worse than pretty good. The more situational, but still good, hydraulic push is 10d6 bludgeoning damage plus knockback. Telekinetic maneuver can be used to disarm, and is probably the most reliable way to do so in the game.

However, you do even better with focus spells. Since in many cases it's possible to refocus right after casting your spell into the weapon, using them is often free (and so your caster friends should be easier to talk in to doing it for you), and many have great effects when unleashed on crits:

--) Moonbeam dazzles its target for the rest of the encounter, giving its targets concealment against it if it relies on sight.
--) Call of the grave prevents at least two actions.
--) Finally, the unassuming hand of the apprentice just gives you another, non-MAP-increasing crit with the same weapon you just attacked with. The damage is comparable to or better than shocking grasp at 13th level--and unlike every other spell you can store in the weapon, it actually scales.

This is something I thought of while reading through the playtest document. The swashbuckler can use acrobatics and one other skill to gain panache, with the second skill based on their swashbuckler's style. This feels quite limiting, since you can easily imagine a character that's good at both athletics and intimidation, and who uses both skills with flair and aplomb. But if you build that character, you'll only ever use of those skills in combat, since the other won't give you panache. I think it makes sense to scrap the three styles and let the swashbuckler use any of the listed skills be default.

I think this is a great point. The point of the swashbuckler is ostensibly to encourage creative use of non-Strike actions in combat, but this limitation hampers creativity rather than facilitates it. Swashbucklers would feel more spontaneous, and be more interesting, if players were free to figure out whichever skill worked best for a situation. (Players who wanted to specialize in one of these tactics would of course still be free to do so, by taking skills and feats that made them especially good at one.)

It's to encourage build and action diversity among different swashbucklers. You can also easily imagine a Druid capable of doing all the druidic things a PF1 Druid could do, but a PF2 Druid now has to choose which of those things they want to focus in (or they can be a generalist, and not be as strong in a given specialty). I would be fine with a feat for a swashbuckler who wants to dip into another style for more versatile panache gain though, but I'd rather it not be the default.

That a given rule is one way to mechanically distinguish characters within a class doesn't entail that it's the only possible way, or a good way. The devs can find something else.

To add to Vlorax, if you trip someone so that they are only next to you when you have both Riposte and AoO available, you are giving them a really nasty tactical fork. Either they stand up and take a whack from you, or they stay down, they have to attack you at a -2 (and you may have better HP than some of the squishier targets they'd rather attack), and you have a better chance to Riposte.

While the third action is by no means the only way to get a critical failure, if a monster has an action left to make a third or later attack and it has few other options for that action, it'll usually attempt it rather than end its turn barring something like a Riposte reaction threatening it; and if a monster is worried about a Riposte and ends its turn instead of attacking, the Riposte has acted as a deterrent, which can be useful as well.

How often will a swashbuckler want to do this, though? I'd have thought that the swashbuckler's optimal last action against an enemy who's not adjacent to an ally is usually Tumble Through, since that way you simultaneously (a) have a good chance to regain your panache, and (b) force your enemy to waste an action closing the distance.

This actually relates to something else I've been wondering that I'd love to hear your take on. The swashbuckler seems designed to encourage moving around a lot—which I think is a neat idea! The problem is that moving around a lot seems like it would make Opportune Riposte less effective, since non-minions will only be likely to critically fail on their later attacks in a turn, and the more everyone's moving, the fewer of those later attacks will be made.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:

Mekkis wrote:

Pathfinder, with it's inherent imbalance, requires a social contract between the GM and the players - the GM to use levers to maintain balance between PCs and their challenges, and the players to show a certain amount of maturity to ensure that they do not exceed the expected power levels of each other (and of the challenges the GM provides).

Thank you; that cogently expresses much of what about I valued about PF1 that feels not to be so present in PF2. Except that the buy-in I look for from my players isn't "keeping their power levels similar and appropriate" but "getting into the wider range of roleplaying options available with more randomised power levels."

That's basically a byproduct of the system's imbalance: when players realise that they shouldn't min-max everything, it opens up many combinations where suboptimal choices (both in character building, and roleplaying) are enabled by the presence of powerful options.

This is a really insightful exchange, I think.

Unfortunately 2nd Edition is just not for my group and I. It feels hauntingly similar to when D&D 4E tried to reinvent itself and lost its roots. I absolutely love my legacy Pathfinder books, and my group enjoys Starfinder. Good luck.

It really does feel hauntingly similar, but also tellingly different.

The key, I think, is that both PF2 and 4e freely and unapologetically sacrifice verisimilitude and internal logic for system math. Why can combat techniques for exploiting an opponent's fear make it harder to benefit from a scimitar's construction? Why does wearing magic bracers on your wrists limit you in using using your full natural agility to dodge? Why can't you demoralize someone more than once every ten minutes? The only explanations take you out of the game and into the metagame: it would (supposedly) be OP otherwise.

But here's the difference. When 4e takes you out of the game and into the metagame, you feel like it's doing this because 4e is your friend and wants you to be awesome. When PF2 takes you out of the game and into the metagame, you feel like it's doing this because PF2 is your elementary school teacher and wants to make sure you're being a good, manageable little kid at recess.

Everything in PF2's Playtest is pretty underwhelming individually; it's an inevitable result of combining tight-math with choice-glut.

This is one of the sharpest one-sentence diagnoses I've seen.