Lycar's page

Okay, so this happened in our AOA PbP game. Pendergrast lives, but the party gets revenge on him (of sorts):

https://www.myth-weavers.com/index.php?/topic/8142-chapter-6-pillars-of-rui n-continued/page/38/

Just about the only thing I wish they did more of was giving Wizards improvements to Recall Knowledge.

They do. It's just that skill feats are not gated behind 'must have the Cast a Spell ability'.

So Level 9 Rogue Resilient... Is it suppose to see this oppressively strong?

...Are you being serious or are you just taking the piss?

Let's compare a few things, shall we...

Rogue:
Lv. 9 Fortitude saves increases to expert. When you roll a success on a Fortitude save, you get a critical success instead.

Barbarian:
Lv. 7 Fortitude saves increases to master. When you roll a success on a Fortitude save, you get a critical success instead.

Lv. 13(!)Fortitude saves increases to legendary. When you roll a critical failure on a Fortitude save, you get a failure instead. When you roll a failure on a Fortitude save against an effect that deals damage, you halve the damage you take.

Fighter/Champion:
Lv. 9 Fortitude saves increases to master. When you roll a success on a Fortitude save, you get a critical success instead.

Ranger:
Lv. 11 Fortitude saves increases to master. When you roll a success on a Fortitude save, you get a critical success instead.

Magus/Thaumaturge:
Lv. 15(!) Fortitude saves increases to master. When you roll a success on a Fortitude save, you get a critical success instead.

Swashbucklers don't get mastery at Fortitude, but they get mastery at will saves. If only at lv. 17.

Oh and Investigators don't get to be masters at Fortitude saves (and only masters at Reflex saves instead of legends). They get a consolidation prize at 17 th level though...

"Will saves increases to legendary. When you roll a success on a Will save, you get a critical success. When you roll a critical failure on a Will save, you get a failure instead. When you fail a Will save against a damaging effect, you take half damage."

And Monks... Monks chose their own saves.

Soo... Rogue is "oppressively strong" how again?

Reading it in advance in other words.

Uhm... isn't that what memorising a spell in a spell slot is in vancian casting?

... Can we talk about how Puff of Poison is a cantrip, the weakest form of spell there is, and that we might want to keep that in mind when interpreting its intended effects?

Creating a 27 m³ cloud of poison does seem a bit too outlandish for a cantrip, so perhaps that is also a reason to go with the actual text in the spell's target entry. Like, a 'puff' describing just enough of a volume to force the intended target to inhale it or something.

I have used Trip across multiple characters and parties. It is the ultimate teamwork maneuver and trivializes fights.

So... what kind of fights exactly does it trivialise though?

The big level +3/+4 boss because it gets destroyed on action economy?

The +2 mini-boss with a gaggle of -1/-2 minions?

The -1/-2 horde?

Because as good Trip is in some situations, it is not great in all situations. Or does your experience indicate otherwise?

How can something be fantastic if it is commonplace and easy to accomplish to the point it's probably as commonly taught a maneuver in every fighting school as holding a sword and parrying?

Bit late to the party, but I hope you do realise that wrestling is a legitimate martial art that was taught in medieval fighting schools? And that throws and grappling moves totally are part of fighting, even if both combatants have weapons?

See https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Fechtbuch_(Talhoffer)/Kapitel_8

and https://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Fechtbuch_(Talhoffer)/Kapitel_3

It would be more fantastic if people would not be using grabs and trips when fighting. If anything, NPCs enemies are not using them enough usually.

Sure, pulling these moves off against mythical creatures many times your size and weight is the fantastical part, but if our heroes can not defeat these critters, how is not every fight against those ends in a TPK? You don't have a problem with the party defeating that six-limbed, fire-breathing lizard, but you balk at them using all the tricks they learned, including unbalancing (don't need to flip the thing on its back to represent a 'trip'!) and hindering it?

Be warned that allowing fighter feats to count toward fulfilling the "two additional artifact feats" requirement before selecting another archetype with the free archetype variant will allow something like:

Of course that is exactly what some people would consider an absolute win.

As long as the whole table is on the same page about that sort of thing that is.

Sooo... all this back-and-forth and the conclusion is, Battle forms (who are mainly a caster thing) don't allow casters to make martials obsolete again. And even for martials, who get access somehow, they are at best a sidegrade.

In other words, they are exactly where they need to be.

Will have to ask the GM about that then.

So in PF 1 there are two spells for breaking curses: Remove Curse and Break Enchantment, available to many spell lists, including Clerics and Wizards.

In PF 2, however, the Break Enchantment spell is nowhere to be found, and Remove Curse is on the Divine and Occult spell lists exclusively.

So, playing a toon in Strength of Thousands, where a certain prestigious school of magic only teaches the Arcane and Primal traditions, the two that don't get access to Remove Curse...

Or in other words, how do Wizards and Druids etc. go about dealing with curses?

I just raise this point as it's a common mistake: As you can't have the Fighter proficiency on both the Shield and the Short Sword, it's better to just attack with the Sword instead of using Double Slice.

Attack with short sword twice: +0/-4

Attack with shield, then with sword: -2/+0

A d6 at -2 is still better then a d6 at -4.

Alchemists have Smoke Bomb as a 2nd level feat, for what it's worth.

The main function of a shield is the +2 circumstance bonus to AC anyway.

This.

Blocking is just the cherry on top. Useful if you have it, but you can live without it.

Anecdotal evidence: In a Age of Ashes game, my Fighter started out with a shield(boss) and short sword doing respectable damage with Double Slice and getting quite a few extra HP out of shield blocking.

By level 4 our Paladin had his shield companion, but we had a ranged rogue in the party. So my guy fell in love with the Cinderclaw gauntlet and used Knockdown and Combat Grab to make the Rogue happy.

Still, in fights against big bads, he would fight with shield and gauntlet rather then sword and gauntlet, because staying up to do the debuffing worked better then the extra damage he could have done with a sword. Damage came from the Paladin and his reaction (also Intimidating Strike) and the Rogue's sneak attack.

But blocking 7th level attacks with a lv. 0 steel shield is just not viable most of the time, so better to use the +2 AC and save the reaction for AoOs on tripped foes.

Of course, with a Sturdy shield of his own, he could use shield blocks more reliably again.

The best video series for new players that I've found is "Knights of Last Call" Combat and Tactics series.

Ohh, those look nice too, good advice!

If your players have trouble with teamplay, may I point you to this guy?

He has a lot of videos with combat examples like this one. It shows off a lot of stuff PCs can do themseleves, and how they can use their abilities to support their fellow party members.

If anyone is interested, the 'alchemical cartridges' that made PF1 Gunslingers possible have their real-life equivalent in the "Dreyse needle gun". The "first breech-loading rifle to use a bolt action to open and close the chamber".

Not only did it allow a soldier to reload much faster, it also allowed him to do that while lying down, whereas a musket needed to be reloaded with 'gravity assist', meaning you had to at least be kneeling to pour your gunpowder down the muzzle to reload. Not a problem behind fortifications, big problem when out in the open.

So PF2 muskets having a reload of 1 (representing about 2 real world seconds) is a bit silly. They should have gone with 'alchemical cartridges' again IMO, especially seeing that firearm ammunition is already described as "typically a prepackaged paper cartridge, including wadding, bullet, and black powder,..."

But hey, whatever.

David knott 242 wrote:

Isn't Qadira the western tip rather than the eastern tip of the Empire of Kelesh?

May the flames of the Dawnflower burn out your error-illuminating eyes!

Heh, still says "Qadira represents just the eastern tip of the continent-spanning Padishah Empire of Kelesh" to this very day. *Casts Resist Energy (Fire) from scroll*

Did you watch the Twitch Stream about Pathfinder Remastered?

Can we just talk about the colours for a momentt?

Left: Jason Buhlman, Director of Game design: Warm, reddish colours and lighting -> Red Oni

Right: Logan Bonner, Pathfinder Lead Designer: Cold, bluish colours and lighting-> Blue Oni

On the left side: Exuberant, giddy, enthusiastic about the project.

On the right side: Calm, collected, 'just the facts', almost technocratic.

So... I wonder, is that colour scheme intentionally crafted for the occasion or just 'a happy accident'?

Angwa wrote:

4e was the first with a skill system that was not a complete mess and with skill challenges at least attempted to provide a framework for resolution. Each skill had a basic, but non-exhaustive) list of clearly defined uses, with a listed action cost if also useable in combat.

There were some feats locked behind being trained in a skill, but also depending on skill levels you unlocked utility powers you could take. Oh, and you had the 5 knowledge skills with which you could use knowledge checks, of which Monster Knowledge checks were a subset.

Beyond the defined out-of-combat applications of the skills...

Hrmmm, I'm aging, and I haven't played any of the following since like '07 so maybe I'm misremembering but it seems to me like TORG, GURPS, and Palladium's d% systems all had these things with regards to skills. I'm confident that almost all of the editions of HERO had this for skills. All of these games serviced the fantasy genre, they simply lacked the brand monolithism of D&D. IMO 4e was actually reacting to other game systems that preceded it. Ultimately, the introduction of feats in D&D3 likely galvanized this (along with making everyone realize that some levels were dead levels). One you have a systemic mechanic like feats, the design possibilities increase exponentially (as does the danger of breaking things).

Hoo boy, if you guys think that's special, take a gander at The Dark Eye...

Lycar, my dude, if you are going to make no effort to understand the actual things people are saying, could you at least not be so antagonistic while doing so?

You will forgive me for getting angry at having the same, old tired arguments rolled out again and again for 'casters deserving Master weapon proficiency', without any willingness to concede some spellcasting power in return.

The fantasy of the glass cannon blaster caster can only exist with the martials being mere meat-shields, protecting the caster while they do 'all the real work'. This also implies that said meat-shields are capable of tanking without any caster support, as supporting the meat shields is not blasting foes. This is not this game.

Instead, the martials are very competent at dealing damage, but can not in return withstand the counter attacks of most monsters without some sort of support, simply because monsters have bigger numbers. The casters are the ones enabling the martials to succeed, but not by trivialising encounters, but by 'levelling the playing field', so to speak.

PF2 is designed so that martial and caster classes need to support each other to succeed, because of the lessons learned from D&D 3.x /PF1.

Casters do emphatically not need better spell to-hits or more damage. They do plenty of damage. But what they do need is maybe about a 2 point or so increase in spell DCs. Because what really makes a caster feel powerful is seeing the Crit Fail effects of their spells more often.

And I'm not talking about double damage from blasting spells, I'm talking about debilitating debuffs actually debilitating on-level foes on more often then 5% of the time. Bosses are still protected by the Incapacitation trait (which serves just as much to protect PCs from lower-level monsters with debilitating abilities for that matter), but on-level and lesser foes should be taken out by de-buff spells more often.

Yes, this still doesn't do anything for the blaster archetype, but it would go a long way for caster players to actually feel like a true master of the arcane (or primal, or divine, or occult) arts, bringing their foes low before them. All that whining about not being good enough at weapon strikes or not doing enough single-target damage is just distracting from that issue, and it is not doing casters any favours.

Arachnofiend wrote:

Master in spellcasting is equivalent to Expert in martial attacks. Note that all of the real casters are Legendary, only the pseudo-martials like the Summoner and Magus are Master.

I mean, I "get it", but its really not.

Because it does nothing to address to the problem on a functional level. No matter how to slice it, a martial who takes a casting archetype will be more accurate/successful at casting by 20 than a caster who takes a martial archetype will be at swinging a sword.

That +2 matters, and its a design asymmetry which is a mistake in my option.

Wrong.

Martials get Mastery at weapons. They top out at +36 to hit, Apex Item and everything. Someone who starts with a 16 stat, gets no Apex Item and only Expert gets to +32.

Casters get Legendary at spells. They top out at +35 spell attack and DC, Apex Item included. There are no bonus items for spell attacks. Someone who starts with a 16 stat, gets no Apex Item and only Master gets to... +31.

You were saying? That's right, martials are just as bad at casting as casters are at swinging weapons. Fancy that. And if anything, a Fighter's spell to-hit being a full 6 points behind their weapon to-hit makes it even less desirable to dabble in spells.

But yeah, sure, keep saying that casters are worse off with weapons then martials are at casting spells...

You mean the same fighter who can get 8th level spells and 3 each of up to 6th level? The same fighter that single handedly warps the the entire game around himself because "they are only allowed to be the best"?

Yeah ignore all the AoE abilities that Fighter can do at will. Ignore all the AoE abilities that martials can do at will, once every 4 turn, or once every hour. Ah but a caster doing single target damage 4 times a day is too much!

You mean the 8th level spells that everybody can get? Those 8th level spells? That are, by the way, always behind in DC and spell to-hit, to the tune of -4 at lv. 20. Seeing how much gnashing of teeth and grousing there is from actual casters because they can't hit Jack or 'always have their spells resisted'...

No, caster dedications are not stealing the real casters' thunder. Dedications aim at getting some utility spells and self buffs. So the real casters don't have to sacrifice their own slots for that. You are welcome.

But yes, sure, compare the damage a Fighter can do with Impossible Volley at 18th level. Composite Longbow 4d8+3(2) Str. +3d6 runes +6(8) Greater Wpn. Sepc. for 37 (38) av. damage in a 10' burst (16 squares). At a -2 to to-hit no less.

9th level Fireball? 18d6, avg. 63 in a 20' burst. 44 squares. Not. Even. Close.

And the fact that the Fighter can do it without expanding spell slots matters only if the adventuring day isn't over after the casters are out of top-level slots anyway.

So yeah, the martials are not going to eat the caster's AoE sandwich any time soon. Nor should they.

Yes, one martial class has to be the 'best' martial class. That burden falls upon the shoulders of the Fighter. So the poor sucker gets all the hate, all the legendary envy. It's lonely on the top. Just ask Pun Pun...

Lycar wrote:

Fighters are good at that. And guess what? They pay a price for it. The price is: Not being able to cast spells. So the Fighter is selfish because he has the audacity to be the gold standard for martials? Just because he isn't good at anything else?

When you put it like this it almost sounds like Fighters were designed with a way too narrow scope to really be healthy for the game.

Depends on what kind of scope you are talking about. If the 'Fighter', the iconic martial fighting class, is the etalon against which all other martial classes are compared, then it serves a valuable purpose.

If that lofty position justifies all the restrictions that come with it is another question, but so far I have not seen anybody accuse the Fighter class of being under-powered.

Just soo much legendary envy...

breithauptclan wrote:

SuperBidi wrote:

There are tons of reactions that would be pointless if they happened after the trigger (Shield Block).

Shield Block specifically says that it happens after the attack. Before the character doing the blocking takes damage, but the attack has to happen, be successful, and deal damage first.

The attack has to happen, be successful and not deal damage otherwise Shield Block is pointless.

And what about Nimble Dodge?

Your ruling breaks the game.

What about Nimble Dodge? Just read the trigger in the feat description:

"Trigger: A creature targets you with an attack and you can see the attacker."

The poor , maligned Rogue must declare the use of his reaction even before the to-hit roll happens. If that misses, or the -2 adjustment fails to change the result, the Rogue's reaction is still used up.

From my understand, the reason in PF1E and 5E that casters are so OP is not because of their damage, it's because their save or suck spells reshape reality so hard it trivializes encounters by simply...wishing they did not exist at all, or something to that effect.

Nobody is asking for OP damage. At most we are asking to be allowed to be good single target blasters...and that's IT. I'm not taking Haste to cast on the Fighter at level 3, I'm not taking Air Walk or Fly, or Wall spells. I'm taking Lightning Bolt, Cone of Cold, Fireball and that's it all day every day and I'm chucking them at the boss. Maybe that is selfish, but why isn't the Fighter who doesn't even have skills selfish because all he does is swing a sword?

Don't you still get it? That is the one thing that martials are allowed to be good at. The. One. Thing! To be allowed to be good single target damage dealers.

Fighters are good at that. And guess what? They pay a price for it. The price is: Not being able to cast spells. So the Fighter is selfish because he has the audacity to be the gold standard for martials? Just because he isn't good at anything else? Really?

So you don't care about Haste and Fly and all that? You just want to mix it up with damage spells? Well... Try a Magus then. They do get pretty good single target damage, and they use damage spells to get it. Of course they do not get many spell slots. They mostly use their cantrips actually. Oh and they are classified as martials, but eh. You said you don't care about that, so, congratulations I guess, got your wish.

Lycar wrote:

But for some people, it is never enough, is it? Some people just can't stand other people getting nice things, unless they can have them too, no matter how many nice things they already have, can they? PF2 is designed to tell them 'No!', and that is what makes it different to 3.x and PF1. If you want OP casters, these are the games for you. PF2 is not.

...but TTRPGs aren't the only things playing with those tropes. You get them a lot in videogames, too... and in a lot of those videogames, the mage is the classic glass cannon. They're fragile. Against tougher foes, they need a fighter to hide behind and a healer to keep that fighter alive. They have a limited tank - they cast and cast and then they run out and then they're kind of useless until they can find a way to recharge... and they get the payment back from those things in AWESOME ARCANE POWER (ie, damage). They get lots and lots of damage as long as the mana lasts. Those classes, in the games they're coming from? They're generally pretty balanced. They're no more or less likely to be OP than any of the other classes.

That's the thing though: The fantasy of the glass cannon blaster caster is only viable in MMORPGS because they are balanced by the tank. The damage sponge, the aggro attractor. The brick(wall) that stands between the monsters and the blasters.

This is most emphatically not the fantasy martial players want in a TTRPG. They want something like Conan. Maybe Merlin. Hercules possibly. Or even Archilles. Someone who is awesome in their own right, heroes to whom snivelling, cowardly wizards are but sidekicks, who occasionally help out with a magic trick, but otherwise better hide behind the broad shoulders of the Alpha Male Hero.

See the problem? These can't coexist in the same game. People who come to a TTRPG with a MMPRPG mindset must be disappointed, because their role can not exist in a game that caters to the martial hero.

At the same time, however, the martial heroes can not be allowed to be so powerful that they can overcome all challenges on their own, without help from anyone else. That too will disappoint many people who harbour power fantasies of self-sufficience.

No, PF2 is a cooperative game, where a whole is more then the sum of its parts, a puzzle game if you will, where players combine the abilities of their PCs to overcome the challenges put in front of them.

And while you can use an 'american screwdriver' to hammer in a screw in a pinch, however messily, hammering in a nail with a screwdriver is a lot less effective.

But you can balance this by making screwdrivers free and hammers limited. You want to save your hammer for when you need it. Don't waste it on screws if you have unlimited screwdriver.

This is literally the meme of you had us in the first half.

Starting on point two your whole thing is literal nonsense. Just because someone wants to play a damage caster does not mean that they are selfish. Just like someone wanting to play a utility character doesn't mean they don't want to be the main character.

This doesn't even have to do with superhero but straight up just how the stories of great wizards are. No one everyone wants to play the guy who is just following around big guy to make sure he gets where he needs to be. Some people want to play the person who uses a rocket launcher and flamethrower to solve problems (blaster casters).

Finally, damage has always been measured in total party effort. The idea that it wasn't is insane. What PF2 did was make it so the numbers range with a +/-2 instead of +/-10 making things a lot less swingy. The reason why casters aren't allowed to deal damage has nothing to do with "hogging combat monster", its entirely because people like you incorrectly assume that a caster dealing good damage 3-5 times a day somehow is "being a damage hog". All while ignoring that people in other editions complain about support casters invalidating combat, not damage casters.

People who want to play damage casters must make up their mind:

A) Be a Martial in all but name and do martial damage in a blasty way... But give up on being a caster and getting to bend reality. A Magus goes a lot that way.

B) Accept that they do not get to upstage martials at their own, damn, thing, so do not get to eclipse martial single target damage.

Unfortunately, the number of people who are so entitled that they demand to get their damage cake and eat it too is too. Damn. High. These people absolutely are being selfish! They want to be the Angle Summoner with everybody else being BMX Bandits. Well, PF2 is not the game for them, and they do not get to demand it being changed to bow to their whims.

The insult to the injury is that casters actually are potentially very good at inflicting damage, just by virtue of having AoE spells alone. If the GM never throws hordes at them to incinerate with Fireball, that is a GM problem, not a PF2 problem.

But for some people, it is never enough, is it? Some people just can't stand other people getting nice things, unless they can have them too, no matter how many nice things they already have, can they? PF2 is designed to tell them 'No!', and that is what makes it different to 3.x and PF1. If you want OP casters, these are the games for you. PF2 is not.

And no, it is simply not true that massive damage casters were not a problem in PF1, just look up builds like 'Cindy' or 'The Mailman'. It was just that compared to the ludicrous number of ways casters had to break the game otherwise, over-damage casters paled as a problem in comparison. Just because people didn't complain about them as loudly doesn't mean they don't exist. So your claim is somewhat disengenious.

So... Sifting through the detritus trying to find something useful in this conversation, I am seeing:

Spellcasters are more complex than many martial classes, but are not more powerful - and may be worse at the dealing damage part of the game unless a particular set of circumstances all arise.

So, for those who feel that way, what do you propose to do to remedy that?

Nothing. I'd just play PF 1 / D&D 3.x, because that's what these games are: More complex classes reward system mastery with more power. It is basically impossible to break the game with a martial class, it takes only a modicum of effort with a caster. CoDzilla anyone? Also, PunPun says 'Hi'.

The whole point of PF2 is that all classes are supposed to work at roughly the same power level. The classes that have fiddly mechanics, the 'puzzle classes', they are there for people who like puzzles.

Think of it as a difficulty setting in a video game:

Easy is for the people who just wanna play through the story. Fighter/Barbarian, go wreck faces, wham, bam, thank you mam.

Hard is for the people who want to beat a game. The kind of people who think Dark Souls is too easy on default difficulty. These people crave that sort of challenge, and Wizards and Alchemists exist.

But at the end of the day, your reward will have been having played through the game, no more, no less.

aobst128 wrote:

That Again!

Booooo.

No no, he has a point...

If used when already in combat on a demoralize check it allows a shove as a reaction (with full MAP) instead of spending an action. Probably not worth it as it is only on crit fails, but that is some benefit.

Well, gotta ask my GM if he allows Haughty Obstinacy to work with that. Fail instead of crit fail. Still only once every blue moon or so, but at least an improvement.

Well, Haughty Obstinacy is a thing that a PC of mine has, so there would be some synergy, but yeah, too little for too high a price its seems.

At least I cannot see any other use/interaction for this, which is quite a pity. Maybe if the Shove came with a free counter-intimidation check or one could use a Trip to shove them on their bottom or something...

So... apparently that is a skill feat that exists.

I am just [strike]completely[/strike] mostly baffled as to... why? What does it even do? I mean, a PC can already punch/shove/skewer/pummel/stab/clobber/cut/disintegrate a fool who so much as looks at them funny.

The only potential use I could see is, if they would just have to roll initiative to see if they get the action off before the intended victim goes, and Say That Again! makes the action just happen without the intended victim getting a chance to get an action in edgewise?

Just a nit-pick, but you several instances where you write 'roll' instead of 'role', like so:

"Now every party doesn’t need to have each roll, but if everyone in the party wants to play a wizard,..."

This is the kind of reply I was looking for when I run my campaign. I really don't want to make video game like rune replacement the norm. so I would prefer ABP but not in place of the idea of magic. Just additional dmg should be natural to the character gaining more knowledge of lethal hit areas.

Would love to discuss further how your campaign has worked out.
I envision some + weapons popping up but the dmg coming from characters. Some runes also seems ok but should not be transferable in terms of ambience and role play for the world I envision.

I can only second the suggestion to look at the Automatic Bonus Progression optional rule. It really makes the damage upgrades come from the characters themselves, and magic is left to do, well, magical things. Like enabling to fight incorporeal creatures, adding elemental damage, making the weapon able to shift form etc.

Blind-Fight is a useful feat to have in that situation too: No flat check to target concealed creatures at all, and even hidden ones only have a DC 5 check.

Plus it would be a good excuse to 'attack squares' as at least adjacent undetected foes are only considered hidden.

Can you imagine if instead of getting everything immediately fighters had to wait a week or more every time they leveled up?

Imagine? Nothing to imagine here. Just play Pool of Radiance if you get the chance to.

But when someone is telling me that charging a spellcaster the equivalent of an entire consumable so that they can have the opportunity to learn a new spell - even though the rules say that nowhere ... and then tells me that my reading is not RAW ... sarcasm is my natural response.

Ah, but the rules also do not say that you don't pay extra for access to the spell formula, so checkmate. /s

But yeah, it is called 'Scribe a Spell' and not 'Get a Spell' for a reason. The 2 spells casters get on level-up are free, everything else will have to be acquired somehow. And the closest equivalent we have is acquiring a construction formula to learn to craft a thing:

"You can buy common formulas at the Price listed on Table 6–13, or you can hire an NPC to let you copy their formula for the same Price. A purchased formula is typically a schematic on rolled-up parchment of light Bulk. You can copy a formula into your formula book in 1 hour, either from a schematic or directly from someone else’s formula book. If you have a formula, you can Craft a copy of it using the Crafting skill. Formulas for uncommon items and rare items are usually significantly more valuable—if you can find them at all!"

'Buying a formula' is akin to buying a scroll, and 'hire an NPC to let you copy their formula for the same price' is probably what Ravingdork's GM did. The only difference is that sribing spells into spell books costs extra. Oh and it can fail because nat.1s happen.

Lycar wrote:

The rules try to simulate reality, except when describing things like magic, which there is no real-world thing to compare to.

If one reading of the rules matches, or at least closely approaches the reality the rule is meant to represent, and the other doesn't, then the one closer to reality is by default the correct one.

Now it is up to you to decide how realistic is is, or is not, to prevent someone from successfully shooting a bow by grabbing or attacking them.

I don't know if you do archery, but shooting a bow involves your whole body. I can see how easy it is to lose your stance, and thus your shot, if someone is interfering with you. If anything, losing a shot only on a critical hit or a roll of 1-4 on a D20 when grabbed is mighty generous.

Good luck swinging a maul or using a long spear while someone is grappling with you as well. I do not believe the purpose of the rules is to simulate reality, but provide a fun, balanced and clear framework for playing a game collaboratively and building a story together. I don’t know how aiming is not an action that all archers can take either, except that maybe such mundane details of combat felt like they slowed the game down too much.

It is a lot easier to hit someone with the shaft or handle of a weapon in a grapple though.

Arguably, maintaining a sense of verisimilitude (like reality, unless noted otherwise) is a basic necessity for a fun and clear framework, Acceptable Breaks from Reality for the sake of balance notwithstanding. This is a trope of its own for a reason.

As far as that goes, one of the upsides of ranged weapons is that, well, you can fight at range. The price to pay for the privilege is that some enemies can mess you up if they are within melee range with you. Unless you have a feat that says otherwise that is. Seems fair to me at least.

Lycar wrote:

Your interpretation requires the Reload to be separate from the Strike. Or the Draw from the Throw in the case of the Quick Draw feat. Which means that MSS doesn't work for thrown weapons either. When your interpretation makes the feat not do what it says it does, I'm inclined to call that interpretation the wrong one.

No it doesn't require Reload to be seperate: individual subordinate actions can be triggers. Quick Draw could trigger the Reaction from Disrupt Prey from the Reloads Interact subordinate action, a reaction from Cut from the Air from the Ranged Strike and a reaction from either the Reload and the Ranged Strike of an AoO. Removal of an individual trigger in no way removes others.

As an example, Step says "Stepping doesn't trigger reactions, such as Attacks of Opportunity, that can be triggered by move actions or upon leaving or entering a square." That doesn't mean your Skirmish Strike [Step + Strike] makes your ranged strikes avoid an AoO because Step mentioned AoO...

If anything, your examples prove my point. Neither Skirmish Strike nor Quick Draw have any text involving AoOs, whereas MSS explicitly does.

You have no argument for why MSS should be limited to removing only the 'ranged attack' trigger from a ranged strike, when it explicitly states that the whole Strike does not trigger reactions, period, even going so far to add text making it also not triggering any non-AoO reactions.

Skirmish Strike and Quick Draw work with both melee and ranged attacks, but only ranged attacks provoke. In the case of Quick Draw, we have an Interact action combined with a Strike, and since Quick Draw has no language pertaining to preventing triggering AoOs, you are still liable for suffering an AoO for drawing a weapon.

MSS covers ranged attacks, no matter how you perform them. You can make a bow shot as part of a Skirmish Strike, and your shot would not provoke. The Step doesn't anyway. You can perform a bow shot as the Strike part of Quick Draw, and while you would provoke for drawing your bow, you would not provoke for shooting your bow.

And yes, Cut from the Air is a non-AoO reaction to a ranged Strike, which MSS explicitly calls out for not being triggered.

So yes, as written MSS very much does remove all triggers from ranged attacks, and you have no grounds to argue otherwise.

Lycar wrote:

The feat states 'your ranged Strikes don't trigger AoOs'. That's it. The action does not trigger, period. No matter how many tags you could use to justify getting an AoO from that Strike, you just don't. That's what the feat says.

You can flip that around and take the opposite position using the same justification: Mobile Shot Stance JUST does what the feat says and it says absolutely nothing about Reloading, Interacting or the Manipulation trait so it doesn't alter how AoO operate with those.

It does say nothing about Reloading, Interacting or the Manipulation trait, because it does not have to.

For a crossbow, the actual Strike is exempt. It is a mere ranged Strike a basic action, and MSS absolves that from provoking. Loading the quarrel is not immune, since that is not a Strike, but an Interact action. Which MSS does not cover.

But if we argue, that in the case of a 'Reload: 0' weapon, the Strike action includes the Reload action, then the Reload is covered by the blanket immunity MSS offers the Strike action, and no extra mention of the Reload action or any of its traits is required.

Your interpretation requires the Reload to be separate from the Strike. Or the Draw from the Throw in the case of the Quick Draw feat. Which means that MSS doesn't work for thrown weapons either. When your interpretation makes the feat not do what it says it does, I'm inclined to call that interpretation the wrong one.

To be clear, I fully understand why you all feel the way you do. I don't think your reasoning is horribly flawed. The language is unclear. I read it a different way. I don't need to keep repeating my arguments but people keep responding as if my logic is inconceivable, which begs me to keep trying to explain myself.

The rules try to simulate reality, except when describing things like magic, which there is no real-world thing to compare to.

If one reading of the rules matches, or at least closely approaches the reality the rule is meant to represent, and the other doesn't, then the one closer to reality is by default the correct one.

Now it is up to you to decide how realistic is is, or is not, to prevent someone from successfully shooting a bow by grabbing or attacking them.

I don't know if you do archery, but shooting a bow involves your whole body. I can see how easy it is to lose your stance, and thus your shot, if someone is interfering with you. If anything, losing a shot only on a critical hit or a roll of 1-4 on a D20 when grabbed is mighty generous.

Ideally, the feat should work that way, but by RAW it doesn't, because it specifies only AoO, and other reactions with a trigger of a ranged attack.

This is the part where I believe you read something into the text it does not actually say.

The feat states 'your ranged Strikes don't trigger AoOs'. That's it. The action does not trigger, period. No matter how many tags you could use to justify getting an AoO from that Strike, you just don't. That's what the feat says.

I do not see how you get to the interpretation that 'your ranged Strikes' is anything other then a clarification that Mobile Shot Stance indeed covers ranged attacks, not melee ones, and also thrown weapons and not just shots. I can not see how you justify that as somehow limiting the effect to merely negating the property of being a ranged attack, and not everything that could otherwise provoke, which the text plainly states it does.

Outside of combat, that should not require a roll.

In the middle of combat on the other hand, the roll could very well represent the attempt to pick up a limp body without interference from other combatants. No, most enemies do not have AoOs, but remember that this is always an abstraction.

While the Knuckle Duster qualifies for Sneak Attack, it isn't Finesse so you'd use Strength on your attack rolls...

You'd have to go with the Bladed Gauntlet on a Thief, but that's a Martial weapon...

Welp, depending on just how much difference there is between your character's STR and DEX scores, the only things I can come up with right now are the Weapon Proficiency General feat and Fighter dedication. At least Fighter dedication allows to get Expert proficiency at lv. 12. You would almost always be 2 points behind in proficiency, but if that is less then the stat divide, it would at least be a mitigation.

I suppose it depends on to which level you want to take this PC.

Lycar wrote:

Fighters are, of course, well equipped to trip with the Knockdown and Improved Knockdown feats. While the latter is a lv. 10 feat, the Trip is automatic on a melee hit.

Knockdown itself offers a MAP-free trip attempt after an initial melee hit. Since Fighters gravitate towards having a good Athletics score, this is worth a consideration.

Knockdown is pretty good at low level. I made a goblin fighter with knockdown and improved knockdown. Very good strategy with a fighter. Fighter and barbarian are the two classes I've seen take the best advantage of tripping or knocking down because it is so easy to build as part of your attack sequence where you get to use your highest attack hit with all your bonuses while tripping as part of the same action. That is a very useful feat combination.

If you're a fighter, barbarian, or monk, I would definitely looking into building a trip specialist as it is an optimal build for those classes.

There is also the fact that, say, a ranged Rogue doesn't need to spend any actions making his target flat-footed when his Fighter buddy does it for him. And the damage from a Rogue's sneak attack makes up for the attack you sacrifice. Never mind the other party members also having an easier time hitting.

Combat Grab also flat-foots the enemy, and if you combine a Trip with a Combat Grab, you can really mess up an enemy's turn, or have another chance to flat-foot the enemy if the trip fails.

Basically, Fighters can chose between attacking AC or Saves to Trip/Grapple, which can make all the difference.

Fighters are, of course, well equipped to trip with the Knockdown and Improved Knockdown feats. While the latter is a lv. 10 feat, the Trip is automatic on a melee hit.

Knockdown itself offers a MAP-free trip attempt after an initial melee hit. Since Fighters gravitate towards having a good Athletics score, this is worth a consideration.

So, I misread the rules on Thief Rogues and didn't see that their add dex-to-damage ability only works on WEAPONS. When I found this out, I was greatly saddned because I built an unarmed attack thief rogue that is now neigh-on useless now that I read that rule (this is for PFS by the way, so no houserules can fix this.)

I don't know the specifics of your character, so what did you dedicate to Unarmed Strikes, so that the image of a brawler can not be salvaged by using, well, Brawling weapons like a knuckle duster?

Lycar wrote:

Mathmuse wrote:

Baarogue wrote:

Disrupting Actions, CR 462 wrote:

Disrupting Actions

Various abilities and conditions, such as an Attack of Opportunity, can disrupt an action. When an action is disrupted, you still use the actions or reactions you committed and you still expend any costs, but the action’s effects don’t occur. In the case of an activity, you usually lose all actions spent for the activity up through the end of that turn. For instance, if you began a Cast a Spell activity requiring 3 actions and the first action was disrupted, you lose all 3 actions that you committed to that activity.
...

Is this relevant?

In my example of the second Stride subordinate action of a Sudden Charge activity being disrupted, the Stride was disrupted but the Sudden Charge was not disrupted.

It is very relevant, seeing that your example directly violates the quoted rule: Lose 1 action, lose the whole activity.

So the monk disrupts the whole Sudden Charge, stopping the Barbarian dead in their tracks and wasting all 2 actions spent. Because it is the Sudden Charge that gets disrupted, not a Stride action that happens to be part of it.

The line in the Disrupting Actions dies not say, "Lose 1 action, lose the whole activity." It says lose the activity, do not get a refund on the costs. An activity spends a number of actions from the three-actions-per-turn budget, and those are lost

Yeah I could have worded that better but please re-read what Baarogue said: "In my example of the second Stride subordinate action of a Sudden Charge activity being disrupted, the Stride was disrupted but the Sudden Charge was not disrupted."

So I pointed out that, even if it is one of the Strides pulling the AoO, it is still the whole Sudden Charge that gets cancelled.

And MSS isn't meant to protect from manipulate traits, so saying it is "broken" from this interpretation is debunked by it not working for manipulate traits on strikes. If I take MSS, and throw bombs, I still trigger reactions/disruptions because of traits, not because of not spending an action on it, or because it is a ranged attack, which, by the way, breaks more things than it fixes. MSS isn't a "bows don't trigger feat," nor is it a "manipulates don't trigger" feat, it's a "ranged attacks don't trigger" feat. I.e. thrown weapons.

So you are saying, the feat does not do what it says it does?

MSS: "While you're in this stance, your ranged Strikes don't trigger Attacks of Opportunity..."

I mean, the wording is pretty clear: Your ranged strike doesn't trigger AoOs (also not other reactions). Not for being a ranged strike, and not for any other reason. Like, having a Manipulate/Interact baked into it for example. So yeah, it does protect from Manipulate traits after all.

Edit: As for shurikens, they were free to draw in PF1 (by virtue of being ammunition), so you could use all your attacks for throwing them, without needing Quick Draw.

In this sense, they are like the 'bows of the thrown weapons', or at least that seems to be the intent.

But that is not really my point. My point is: even when I hit with three crits (I don't roll that good usually) and all my other attacks, the night hag wasn't going down. My problem isn't that I feel bad because my character went down (that happened often enough before), my problem is my damage output feels pitiful (especially compared to the hag).

SuperBidi already mentioned it, but you have to keep in mind that the martial classes are very closely balanced for damage output in PF2. Since the Flurry Ranger can do a lot of attacks, every individual attack is correspondingly weaker. A critical hit with a d6 Agile weapon is about as good as a regular hit with a d12 weapon outside of static bonuses. On the other hand, you have more opportunities to make the static damage count, so there is that.

It is generally not possible to one-shot enemies outside the lowest of levels. In return, most enemies will likewise not be able to drop a PC in just one round of attacks.

However, as far as tactics are concerned:
SOLDIER-1st already hinted at it, but if your enemies' actions are worth more then your own individually, it becomes more important to deny the opponent their actions, rather then bringing your own attacks home.

Think of it as trading a pawn for a rook in chess: If you can inflict 20 damage with a hit, and the enemy 30, if you forgo an attack to deny the enemy theirs, you are basically preventing 10 damage to the party. Tripping, grappling and even shoving enemies can force them to either suck up penalties or spend actions countering them.

Sure, if that only costs them their 3rd action, it will not make their first two attacks a round any less deadly, but many monsters have special abilities that require 2 or 3 actions to perform. And if that 3-action attack can, say, inflict 60 damage to the whole party, then your sacrifice of 20 damage just means the party is 40 damage ahead.

Do you have any martial controllers in the party? Can the Monk do trips, grabs and shoves to force enemies to waste actions? Slow spells? Heck even things like Demoralise and Intimidating Strike at least lessen then chances for enemies to hit and crit. How is your party set up for that sort of thing?