MEATSHED's page

Now, please explain to me again how it's debatable that the class is supposed to be all about Rage, and that the player who plays according to the above advice is somehow at fault for failing to consider other tactical approaches.

There is also the major issue of barbarian feats mostly only working while raging. Out of the 88 barbarian class feats, around 20 of them actually do something when you aren't raging.

Yeah. Lay on hands is pretty decent to pick up on on barbarians.

Still, though, true military combat with hundreds of people isn't exactly what PF is for, and you could do a lot more good in any number of situations with the much better feats listed above. I don't think that scouting needs to be gated behind a feat, either. It feels like the feat exists to fill someone's quota.

This is kind of the issue with a lot of them. Like yeah in certain campaigns they can come up fairly often but there are usually better systems to do those campaigns in.

MEATSHED wrote:

Like this tactic requires

1) a chokepoint that the party can use to funnel which is long enough that the backliners are safe and can actually see into the room and narrow enough that frontliners can block movement though it.
2) The enemies not to outperform the party at range (Which is mostly outperforming the caster's blasting as non-AoE attacks will have line of sight issues)
3) A room small enough that an AoE spell can hit a reasonable number of the enemies in it from the center (Which means that you can probably cover said room in 1 move action, which is weird from an encounter building standpoint but you are going to have to clarify if by 30 x 30 you mean squares or feet, because if its feet a 6x6 square room is extremely small for basically any tactical game, a character with reach covers over half the map)
4) A door you can break so it doesn't just get closed
5) The enemies and party's only real goal being to kill each other, as if there is any kind of time crunch in the fight its going unopposed by half the party.

Like I could see this occurring in combats where you are defending something but to have it be common enough as to be a default tactic seems odd.

Why does that seem odd considering how many times you're doing an interior room by room clear in APs?

6x6 is suffocatingly small even in games where you are slower and have less range than pf2e and the idea that it is treated like a normal map size is giving me an aneurysm, I always made my maps at least 10*10. Like my points with 1, 3 and 5 was that those things mean that you can't really have a tactically interesting map. There is 1 chokepoint that the players start with access to and the rest of the map is too small to have anything interesting like flanking routes or a 2nd chokepoint because around 8/36 squares are going to be filled with characters.

We'll position far enough back their reach won't work. What do we care if they take a while to kill.

Some people earlier were saying we can't drop nukes in the room. But if they move out of range, we'll nuke them.

So now you're saying move up and use reach then move back? We'll be nuking them as they stand back. Caster will pop up and nuke them.
Players have far more variety than monsters most of the time. If you're going to keep bringing up corner cases, just spend time thinking out how to deal with each issue if the enemy tries to use it.

If reach, move far enough back reach doesn't work.

Pop the door and nuke if they hide around corners and such.

We don't really care where they set up as long as we control where we fight. We don't care how long it takes to kill them, so have them hide in the room. What do we care? We're still controlling their actions and not the other way around.

Your tossing out variables we've dealt with many times. We adapt the vertical kill zone strategy as needed. If the DM wants to hold them back and let us whittle them down at range using move actions in and out of battle, we're perfectly ok with that. We'll win that fight as well. Medicine works to heal all day.

The main issue is that this tactic is built around an area being easier for invaders to bunker down in than actual defenders. Like you don't have anything to encourage them to fight it out with you instead of leaving to get back up or leaving until you actually enter. Honestly if you are backed up to avoid reach the battle is more likely to turn into people just delaying in a cold war scenario because someone closed the door and whichever side opens it is going to get attacked trying to open it.

MEATSHED wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

We don't spread our attention. Which is why we funnel to a kill zone using a vertical set up to focus damage.

Quote:

We did this in a giant battle a few days ago. Drew them into a hallway, lined them up, tripped them as they came, smashed them as we stacked bodies. Trip is particularly effective against giants due to their weak Reflex saves.

How exactly do you funnel and draw monsters into hallways? Because with how you describe it, it seems like someone is just opening the door and the enemies just follow them like an old roguelike.

Think for a bit about it.

You have the martials set up at the door or hallway. Understand this requires martials who don't mind doing this which is what I think most groups don't have.

Then you hit he monster with ranged attacks if they don't come. They have a simple choice, die at range or close the distance to where we want them to fight.

It's why on these boards I see people undervalue archery. Sure, archery doesn't do as much damage as melee martials, but it is useful in that you can use it to draw monsters in by hammering them from range until they come. Same as casters can do this.

So say you have monsters in a 30 by 30 room. You open the door. Your frontline martials don't enter the room. They position at the door using a delay action depending on where the monster is in the room.
Your archer and ranged casters start to hit the monsters. If the monsters have a decent ranged attack, maybe you have a problem. If not, then you hammer them from range until they come. We don't care where or how they die if the DM did something odd like have them stand there in the room taking cover waiting to die.

Wouldn't the monsters just move to the front left or right side of the room, the part the ranged attackers can't see them (which is most of the room if they are in a hallway). Hell if they have more reach they can stab one of the front liners and then just move out of line of sight to the ranged attackers (which most of the ranged attackers can do as well).

Gouging claw is a spell attack, while sneak attack needs either a weapon or unarmed strike, with ruffian removing some restrictions on the weapons they can use with it. Ruffian doesn't allow sneak attacking with spell attacks, they need magical trickster to do so.

Replenishment works on channel smite (and also stuff like restorative strike)

The other big animal/nature themes would probably be animal companion or warden spell ranger and beast or fey summoners. The occult spell list does fit fey trickery a bit more which is why fey bloodline sorcerers get a bunch of occult spells as bloodline spells.

I always saw Monastic Weaponry as the equivalent of a Stance (ie costs a class feat to access specific attacks) except that it opens up more variety and does not cost an action.

A lot of them do have the issue of not making a whole lot of sense over just punching someone stanceless, especially in core where a lot of them are d6 or less and are one-handed with maneuver traits. The bo staff is very solid though.

MEATSHED wrote:

Superstition's entire gimmick is hating magic, I feel like someone like that isn't just going to be like "Don't use heroism on me, however standing next to me with bless active is fine"

"Some spells restrict you to willing targets. A player can declare their character a willing or unwilling target at any time, regardless of turn order or their character’s condition (such as when a character is paralyzed, unconscious, or even dead)."

So willing is not just about the character willingness. If the Bard with Conceal Spell bluffs my Barbarian into believing they're not casting a spell on them I can still decide if I accept it or not.

"Whether you're a member of a superstitious family or culture that distrusts magic, a warrior in constant battle against wizards and witches, a survivor of a magical accident that instilled an intense aversion in your mind and body, or a scion of a bloodline known for its magic resistance, your rage is inimical to magic"

Amongst the 4 archetypes described in the Instinct, only one will run away from magic at all cost. The warrior in constant battle against wizards and witches is obviously affected by a lot of magic on his own volition: their career choice. Similarly, the last 2 archetypes have more of a natural resistance to magic than a willing choice to not be affected by magic. So they can be considered always unwilling to represent their magical resistance when the character itself is not necessarily refusing any form of magic (actually, the Superstition Barbarian doesn't refuse any form of magic as they use magic items, it's just the magic from spells).

They also are driven by a deep distrust of magic. Like that is the first thing the instinct says. This reading also makes what I said pointless because heroism doesn't require a willing target so a superstition barbarian can have a spellcaster walk up to them and cast a spell directly on them and that doesn't break anathema according to you. Despite the whole continuing to travel with someone who has shown that they will to cast spells on you counts as willing accepting them thing.

In fact couldn't a master mind rogue be trained in every non lore skill at level 1 giving them a leg up at any out of combat situation.

Literally every type of rogue can do this.

https://paizo.com/pathfinder/faq

In the Recovery Checks degrees of success, remove all instances of "(plus your wounded condition, if any)"; that's both in the failure and critical failure entries.

Under Taking Damage, remove the final sentence that reads, "If you have the wounded condition, remember to add the value of your wounded condition to your dying value." This reminder should only apply to when you gain the dying condition after getting knocked out.

Effectively it just applies when you go down, not everytime dying increases.

Divine attributes are used for exactly one background (raised by belief) to determine the attribute bonus it gives.

MEATSHED wrote:

One of the example topics for nature recall knowledge is geography.

Would it be Society to learn about geography like cities and states? Since they are "humanoid made".

Yeah, natural geography would be nature, while stuff like borders and city layouts would be society.

Meatshed wrote:

I would probably just give her occultism or arcana, giving a specific lore as a divine skill doesn't feel great because of how narrow it is. To give you an idea there is one thing you can worship to get a lore skill and its whatever lore you want and even then it lets you pick performance instead.

I looked through the deities in the Players Core book and didn't see any that gave Lore as a divine skill. Which being are you referring to? I'd like to read on it.

Its a pantheon, The Enlightened Scholar's Path.

One of the example topics for nature recall knowledge is geography.

On another note Under the Lore skill it lists Fortune-Telling Lore. Is this skill supposed to be some sort of accurate foretelling of a person's future or is it intended for scamming superstitious people? How would you judge or explain Fortune-Telling Lore?

You could do it for both, which is why both the fortune teller and false medium backgrounds give it to you. It would mainly be knowing about the different ways to tell fortunes and also how to apply them to make a living.

My Goddess Oracle (for my world) is the Goddess of Time (destiny, divinization, fate, and prophecy). I am wondering if the Fortune-Telling Lore skill is a suitable Divine Skill?

I would probably just give her occultism or arcana, giving a specific lore as a divine skill doesn't feel great because of how narrow it is. To give you an idea there is one thing you can worship to get a lore skill and its whatever lore you want and even then it lets you pick performance instead.

To be fair 14 int runs into resource issues early on, which is something that I would hoped to be smoothed out a bit with the remaster because 1-3 alchemists could use a few more reagents.

No, as the d6 upgrades triggers when you cast a positive/vitality spell, and interacting with vital beacon isn't casting it.

MEATSHED wrote:

That is still just worse than the standard d8 agile strikes stances usually have.

That's a bit of an exaggeration.

There are currently 17 Monk Stances. Of those 17, 4 offer a d8 Agile attack, so, a smidge under 25%. Of those 4, one, Tangled Forest Stance, only becomes available at Level 8... the same level as Feral Mutagen can grant a d8 Agile attack. So, I don't really count that.

So, 3 of 17 Stances with Agile d8. Stumbling Stance has the disadvantage of disallowing all Strikes other than Stumbling Swings... and personally, I prefer the ability to choose different attacks when I need to.

Leaving Tiger Stance and Wolf Stance.

given the criteria that you are applying removes 12 out of 17 stances, 2/5 is close enough to 50% that I'm willing to say usually, especially because it was 2/3 before secrets of magic.

MEATSHED wrote:

The main issue with bestial is that its weapons kind of suck until you have feral or greater, which are both decently late options for getting an unarmed strike die equal what monks get at level 1.

I don't know about that, personally. Lesser Bestial gives a d6 Bite with Agile d4 Claws and yeah, that's definitely worse than Monk Unarmed.

Moderate though comes in at 3rd and gives a d8 Bite with d6 Agile Claws. That's basically equal to most Monk Stances. The only one I can find that beats it is Dragon Stance, with the d10 Dragon Tail attack and no restrictions on other Strikes (meaning you can use a d6 generic Agile punch along with it.)

That is still just worse than the standard d8 agile strikes stances usually have.

5e has the problem of sorc being a pretty terrible choice compared to wizard bc wiz is spontaneous AND can add to its book. Sorc becomes pretty superfluous in that system

Wizards can also prepare more spells than sorcerers actually know.

The main issue with bestial is that its weapons kind of suck until you have feral or greater, which are both decently late options for getting an unarmed strike die equal what monks get at level 1.

Blave wrote:

Atalius wrote:

Looking to wield a two handed D12 trip weapon does anyone have any recommendations? Don't want reach with it.

Scythe, Ogre Hook and Warflail would probably be my top choices. The bigger question is do you find a deity who has one of those as their favorite weapon and fits your concept (assuming you want to use your deity's favorite weapon).

Ahh ok, I was planning on going a deity with the best spells for a self buffing Warpriest, so I think I would replace the D12 weapon with one of these D10 + Trip alternatives. I don't lose anything really if I don't use the deitys favored weapon do I?

You don't get the +1 status bonus to restorative strike (which isn't too bad because you get status bonuses pretty easy from spells), can't use replenishment of war (which is a pretty good feat) and don't get crit spec or master prof(which is like fine for most of a campaign)

I mean warpriest has always been good, just not really what people wanted from them. They still have most of the weaknesses, the only one they don't really have any more is being a bit MAD due to needing strength, charisma, wisdom and dex, now they can just focus on strength and wisdom along with con and a flex stat for their increases. Strengths are still mostly the same, pretty much always better than cloistered early, decently durable and the divine list is fine if you go pure support on levels where the -2 to spells matters (however divine's damaging spells are a lot more consistent now)

Weirdly enough the magus sample builds never actually recommend you raise int, despite it being the class in most need of more skills due to be tied with the lowest number of trained skills with wizard (before KAS).

Your proficiency modifier is (and always has been from what I can remember) your level + the 2/4/6/8 from the rank. So the stat+proficiency does have your level in there because your proficiency mod includes your level. Its on page 11 in the remaster rulebook.

I think there is no reason to abandon attributes for this game.

Can a game be fun without attributes? Ofcourse
Can a game be fun with attributes? Ofcourse
The thing is it doesn't matter if a game has them or doesn't. Balance will be argued over anyway. Only difference will be in a game that only expresses ability through skills and feats or whatever it uses the argument will be over those instead.

I think the main thing is if combat and out of combat stuff should have substantial overlap with what effect them in combat heavy systems and if that helps or hinders character concepts which is just a discussion for like every tactical tabletop game.

I don't know. Seems like they're being civil to me...

But honestly, why are stats necessary?

They aren't. The main thing with how pf2e does stats is that combat is a heavy focus, and you are probably going to be rolling your main stat nearly every combat turn, sometimes multiple times. Its why a lot of games are separating out of combat stuff from combat stuff if they focus on it, usually letting players find a way to connect the two e.g a spellcaster blowing a door up with magic rather than breaking it physically.

I agree with Teridax on the point that p1e to p2e was a change toward a more balanced game and that it was a good thing.

The balance was made on a series of judgment calls as to what should be good at what and how good. Like melee being better at single target damage than ranged as a general balancing principle.
That doesnt mean that all the judgment calls they made for balance were perfect.

The problem I see with Int is that the designers over estimated the value of RK and lore, gaining trained in more skills is over valued because of how many skills you start trained in from class and background already hit the saturation point of most concepts, also there are other ways to get trained in more skills besides int, more languages doesn't factor into much mechanically (i guess it lets you intimidate in many languages)so although the right stat is giving languages, it really shouldn't be considered part of the stats mechanical balance to any significant degree, skill wise and actions from skills comes down to crafting writing spells into your spellbook deciphering text and RK and although good to have if you cast spells and have a spellbook its not great for anyone else with int.

So yeah. I think what int can do for each +1 was overvalued if the goal was to have balanced stats.

It's a weird mix of stuff honestly. Like yeah in certain scenarios or campaigns intelligence can be pretty good. This also applies to like investigator. The main thing is that most campaigns aren't like that, and for campaigns that are like that there is probably a better system to play it in. It's one of the main issues with investigator honestly.

Not really, even without attack of opportunity people will usually prefer taking the small amount of mental damage over going prone unless they have enough actions to just stand up and hit you again, but they will probably always prefer taking the mental damage over going prone next to someone with AoO. Iron command is nice to push a little bit of damage with a little bit of control, selfless shield is nice to help you not die.

Iron command and selfless shield are okay, destructive vengeance is really bad. Keep in mind that they only work if the enemy is within 15 feet of you, so if the main way you're taking damage is from ranged attacks they don't help that much.

So in other words the benefits of int are things many of these tables don't value because they don't make situations in their campaigns that require int to succeed or at least get more desirable outcomes?

There are also just ways around it. Same with strength. You don't want to deal with encumbrance? Get a bag of holding. If you don't want to deal with not adding your level to skills get untrained improvisation, both are a lot more efficient at what they do compared to raising your str to carry 2-3 more bulk or int to get 2-3 more skills and hope its enough. Languages is also something that you can't really rely on because if the party needs to know something its going to be in a language they know so the plot can keep happening.

I'm not sure if catering to "I want to be a warrior with exactly one magic trick that is offensive in nature and just as strong as my other options" is something that it's honestly worth the effort to enable. Like there's plenty of concepts for characters that I wanted to play that don't really well in the rules (e.g. monk with a polearm, crossbow inventor, gun sorcerer) but the point is not "can you play any concept you can think of" but "are there enough viable character concepts for you to have fun with the game."

To be fair warrior who mixes offensive magic and weapon attacks is pretty common concept and that kind of doesn't work at some levels because of how you'll usually be around -3-4 on your spell DC at them, even if you're a magus or warpriest. This isn't really unique to pf2e but it is kind of annoying for magi to start the game with almost the same casting as everyone else and then are just worse at some levels.

MEATSHED wrote:

I mean it was also just needing to rush out the class because the mechanic they were built around was removed.

Paizo needs to put a system in place to prevent this as it happened to both the Alchemist and the Witch and it's unacceptable for a company as balanced focused as Paizo to release stuff that is so far below par.

I mean they have, its making books with less classes. After the APG I think gunslinger is the only class that get discussions about its power level (which honestly is probably more about reload weapon balancing than anything). Some of them get complaints, e.g inventor doesn't get a lot of support outside of guns and gears, people want summoner to be better at casting summon spells, but not really in a this class is bad way.

It's a remaster spell, probably to replace glitterdust. It is official.

Bluemagetim wrote:

Question. Does everyone playing a non fighter martial feel like they are not optimal because they have 2 less to hit?

And, to add to that question, does anyone who plays a monk feel like they are "gimped" because they can't maximize their AC? Explorer's clothes can't be maxed out until level 10, after all.

I mean monks literally get special treatment in starting with expert armor, something not even the other class that get legendary armor gets.

Question. Does everyone playing a non fighter martial feel like they are not optimal because they have 2 less to hit?

Its actually a decently common complaint that I see that none of the other martials feel as good as fighter does just from the +10% to hit fighter has.

You would only get double rolls on your 1st attack, but you could just true strike -> strike ->true target -> strike to have both attacks get double rolls.

MEATSHED wrote:

Also the 2nd point doesn't really make sense because if you wanted to get expert in religion you could just spend your standard trained skill into religion instead of a skill you only planned to have trained.

?? So you are saying that losing something planned is not a concern?

As mentioned, I got surprised, about what is qualified as important and with so many assumptions, like if when adventuring you would only face the predefined A, B or C and that's all.

Your point was that it saves you skill points if you want to go to expert, which it doesn't unless you want more expert skills than you get naturally (the absolute lowest a character gets with 0 int is 4, most get 5). There is also how easy it is to get extra trained skills outside of raising intelligence.

I mean it is an advantage it just isn't really worth increasing int over most stats for it. Also the 2nd point doesn't really make sense because if you wanted to get expert in religion you could just spend your standard trained skill into religion instead of a skill you only planned to have trained.

If you need to switch hit you don't even need to go drifter though, just get an attached weapon and have a better gun and worse melee weapon because you are going to use the gun more anyway.

Yeah poppets, Automatons (and maybe androids, can't remember), skeletons and leshies don't.

The main issue with int is that it only covers some recall checks and the other stat that is used for recall is wisdom, which also effects perception, medicine and will saves.

Switchhitting has always been weird because most of the time it's just "ranged character who isn't completely helpless in melee" and the actual usefulness of switch hitting is kind of limited because of how kind of rare it is to actually need to swap and how expensive weapons runes are while you don't really have a way to mitigate it like dual wielders do.

I mean oracle is better power level wise, they are at worst a bad divine sorcerer with better defenses. Its gimmick is not worth engaging with a lot of the time but if I had to make a character as oracle or investigator the oracle is probably coming out as stronger.

The multiple attack plenty prevents a lot of fast attacks from hitting, meaning that 2 action strikes than don't progress it more would be much more valuable. Also save spells are mostly balanced around using 1 a turn, map isn't really an issue there so you could have someone casting 3 pretty strong spells a turn. The main issue I can see if that having more actions mainly benefits offensive play as you can only stack so many defensive buffs and more actions means more actions you can use to move so squishy characters are much easier to get in on. There is also the issue of class balance, most notably monks get a lot worse because they frequently kind of struggle to find stuff to do with their 3rd action because of how efficient they action wise and most agile builds (agile grace fighters and flurry rangers mainly) get a lot better because they can actually hit pretty accurately even on max multiple attack plenty.

Squiggit wrote:

Xenocrat wrote:

This seems to be widely hated by the online fans (see Animist playtest) but is something that at least one Paizo developer is trying to get away with (see Animist playtest).

The playtest animist only got advancements on one save, not three.

It was the first case of advancement from success to crit on an expert rather than master save. The universal reaction everywhere was one million monkeys on one hundred forums typing on keyboards that this was an unprecedented mistake, but then Shakespeare informed us this was a brilliant planned advance in game design.

I think it was less hated and more like "Why does getting master in fort give them the will save upgrade?".

MEATSHED wrote:

Captain Morgan wrote:

Yeah I wonder if they intended to leave that immunity in there.

Its there because there isn't a reason to sustain it if there wasn't, as casting it on someone gives them a free recall knowledge. I think it would be fine if they just got a recall every round but that is the only reason I can see.

That free action to seek or recall knowledge is part of the spell effect. Why would that not happen when the spell is sustained?

Sustaining a spell just lengthens the duration, it doesn't cause the spell to happen again. Sustaining blood ward doesn't let you swap the creature type it applies to for example (but sustaining storm lord does let you swap the weather because that is specifically mentioned as something you can do when sustaining it)