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Deriven Firelion wrote:

Are they still doing high level APs? I don't mind using two APs, but I do like the high level game. Stopping at 10th to 12th is pretty boring. Run your character to midlevel, then never see what they can do at higher level? That's not particularly fun. You toss your character away and start a new AP? I don't like that.

Curtain Call (the one after wardens of wildwood) is a 11 to 20 AP, and James Jacobs hinted that there are 2 more 11-20 APs in development. I am almost certain one of those coincides with the mythic content coming in war of the immortals.

Glad to hear that. They finally made the game very playable all the way up to 20, be terrible that after finally creating a version of the game playable to 20 without extensive modification they stopped or slowed production of content to get you to 20.

Are they still doing high level APs? I don't mind using two APs, but I do like the high level game. Stopping at 10th to 12th is pretty boring. Run your character to midlevel, then never see what they can do at higher level? That's not particularly fun. You toss your character away and start a new AP? I don't like that.

If a combat is clearly not going to happen within 10 to 30ft, why would you ramp up your curse?

Why would I make a flame oracle if I did not intend to use the focus spells as that is the main draw of the mystery? It's not he master in reflex saves. That is a pretty weak upgrade. The flame oracle focus spells are pretty good.

If you play the game within 30 feet all the time and no enemies are outside 30 feet, then I guess you are ok.

I don't like being offguard to enemies past 30 feet or having to target everything as hidden past 30 feet. No point in picking up reach spell for a flame oracle as after a single daily casting of a focus spell and then cast another and suddenly you're Mr. I can't see past 30 feet and have to play like everything is hidden to me past 30 feet or I'm using player knowledge.

I don't enjoy the disadvantages of that at all.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Gortle wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Flame

is fine.

No, it isn't. Not sure why you think this.

Your precise vision range becomes 30 feet. Things are concealed from you and can't be mitigated. At moderate they become hidden from you past 30 feet. All this to generate a 10 foot aura of flame that does 4d6 damage to everyone including allies while doing 1d6 to you.

All this on a d8, weak defenses class that is better off operating from range.

It's not a good curse. The hidden condition past 30 feet makes it nearly unplayable unless everything operates within that 30 feet meaning hit by auras, gazes, and the like with a very average fort save.

You don't really know what's going on past 30 feet and can't target with spells past that range.

It's not worth the tradeoff and gets worse as you level.

I wouldn't call that fine. I'd call it an extremely weak, almost unplayable option. All of this from your curse for what? Master Reflexes? And some fairly weak focus spells? Seems not great.

Concealed is an easy problem to get around. You just have to use abilities that don't target eg area effect spells like fire ball, summons etc.

There is an exception for fire magic. The range of 30ft is workable for most modules anyway.
You get good focus abilities.
You just aren't thinking about the posibilities.

No. I played one. The curse when you can't see past 30 feet is terrible.

Their focus spells are good. But that past 30 foot blindness range is hugely exploitable, makes you off-guard to everything past 30 feet, and turns you into a relatively close combatant for auras, gazes, and the like.

As I told you, the damage aura affects your allies. You have to be within 10 feet of enemies for the aura to hurt anyone. So it creates a bad situation of having to be within 10 feet of an enemy and often within 10 feet of the martials. So you end up in this situation where you might be hurting your friends while getting easily hammered by the enemy.

So you basically have this curse that hamstrings you, hurts your friends, damages you, and what do you get for it? Master Reflex save and some good focus spells that aren't so good as to be worth the bad.

At least the ancestor curse is mostly annoying, not actively making it hard for to you to interact with your allies risking damaging them or setting you up in range to get whacked on top of making you off-guard to ranged attackers who can slam you hard.

It's not worth it as you level up. Playing a curse that gets progressively worse you level is not how they used to design oracle curses.

Oracle curses used to be designed so that the oracle learned how to harness the power of the curse. Now they seem to be designed to screw you up worse as you level with minor benefits if not outright unplayable burdens. Now the design of the original PF1 oracle curse where the oracle eventually turned the curse to their advantage.

The flame oracle is not fun as ranged attacks against you grow more powerful and you can't see the battlefield past 30 feet and you have to stay close to extremely dangerous creatures with caster defenses and risks of harming your friends.

You'll see how this works if you play one up to a higher level. It really starts to suck that off-guard against ranged attackers and being inside a 30 foot range all the time to use your abilities. Not worth it.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Flame

is fine.

No, it isn't. Not sure why you think this.

Your precise vision range becomes 30 feet. Things are concealed from you and can't be mitigated. At moderate they become hidden from you past 30 feet. All this to generate a 10 foot aura of flame that does 4d6 damage to everyone including allies while doing 1d6 to you.

All this on a d8, weak defenses class that is better off operating from range.

It's not a good curse. The hidden condition past 30 feet makes it nearly unplayable unless everything operates within that 30 feet meaning hit by auras, gazes, and the like with a very average fort save.

You don't really know what's going on past 30 feet and can't target with spells past that range.

It's not worth the tradeoff and gets worse as you level.

I wouldn't call that fine. I'd call it an extremely weak, almost unplayable option. All of this from your curse for what? Master Reflexes? And some fairly weak focus spells? Seems not great.

The benefits eventually outweigh the drawbacks in PF1.

Not so much in PF2 for most of the curses. They get pretty terrible, borderline unplayable for a few of them like Bones, Flame, or Lore. Not sure they made that design choice to make the class unplayable as you level and make casting your main ability get you there.

Oracle in PF1 never this bad or unplayable for so little benefit.

I prefer the curses tied thematically to the mystery. I think it makes for a cooler class. But the curses can be unplayable at times unless you build around them, which the oracle is not great at.

Hopefully they get a cleric like glow up in Player Core 2.

I was looking at the oracle. Given the new refocus rules allowing full points back all day the oracle is now penalized for relying on focus points. Before their curse advances, they are limited to a single focus point use after advancing their curse to minor for the rest of the day as advancing their curse past moderate overwhelms them.

So first encounter you can use two focus points, then every other encounter for the rest of the day you can use 1 or you become overwhelmed even if you focus to recover multiple points.

For a class heavily built on focus point use for revelation spells, this pretty terrible.

Have they given any viable workarounds for this prior to the remaster? It really puts them at a disadvantage given how other classes can get their focus points back much easier.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Players hit too hard. Their damage is maybe a tad too high.

To increase the players' damage, I gave them stronger weapons: two +1 Striking Flaming Longswords. Otherwise, their damage would have been even lower.

Basing the idea of players not doing enough damage on a 3rd level module isn't testing the game.

I can assure you that after playing and/or seeing nearly every class to level 17 plus and several to level 20, players hit extremely hard, perhaps a bit too hard. Their tactics and options are often superior to the enemies they face and become increasingly so as you gain levels.

I agree with Gortle, there's a level where Reactive Strike becomes nearly ubiquitous so enemies shouldn't trigger it if they can avoid to. Especially if they are next to many PCs.

How do you calculate a Tripped target not standing up? Do you have them attack on the ground with the -2 penalty? Or do you say give them all Kip Up as a skill feat to account for the trip tactic?

Being tripped is very much a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. It is the only combat maneuver that operates in this fashion usable with a two-handed big dice weapon.

Squiggit wrote:

Honestly the fighter is such a strong class you could almost just pick your feat choices at random and still have a character that functions well as long as you wield a weapon that matches your (also randomly selected) weapon group.

The bar for making an effective DPR machine is pretty low here.

Yes there is a lot of space in fighter builds as only a few of the feats are required and they just have more feats, but there are some necessary feats for your fighting style or you really aren't moving above the base damage. You might think your fighter is OK but it is not compared to what it could be.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I've seen a sword and board and a two-weapon fighter in play and the the two-hander fighter is really the only one that keeps up with the other powerful DPS classes like the rogue and barbarian.

Then you aren't doing your two weapon fighter right.

The two handed fighter is doing around 25% more damage per hit, but the two weapon fighter is landing more hits because of the reduced MAP and because he can use quickened better.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

The Reactive Strikes at full BAB with a two-handed weapon really set them apart.

That's why it is hard for me to make any fighter other than a big 2-hander fighter. I have to force my mind to accept suboptimal damage to play a different class fantasy because any fighting style other than big two-hander really doesn't maximize the fighter's abilities.

Yep the extra zero MAP attacks are important, but you don't always get offered them, and when you do the other fighters get them as well - just at less damage per hit.

Gortle, you know me by this time. The Reactive Strikes are always going to happen or at least a great deal of the time. The character is built to activate them often taking the extra AoO at 10th level and working to activate both of them doing what gesalt recommends or taking Opportune Backstab by level 16 with gang up.

I found out a while ago that Opportune Backstab and Gang Up don't require sneak attack or a finesse or agile weapon. Works fine with a two-handed weapon.

So I started taking Rogue Archetype and picking up Gang Up and Opportune backstab with my 2-hander fighters.

I often set up the Trip fighter using Smash Down now? Then pick up the extra AOO at 10th. Then Gang up At 12th. Then Opportune Backstab at 16th.

It creates an often double AoO opportunity. One activated by a hit from your ally and one from standing up.

Which is why when I calculate my damage, I do so with Reactive Strike as I know I will eventually bring this combination online.

It's very hard for a two-weapon or any other build to match it in effectiveness and damage.

I really just need to turn off the optimizer mentality and enjoy the different fighting style, but it's so hard to do.

Maybe you will point out something I'm missing, but near as I can tell Gang up and Opportune Backstab are available to any class willing to invest in the archetype and spend the higher level feats.

Honestly the fighter is such a strong class you could almost just pick your feat choices at random and still have a character that functions well as long as you wield a weapon that matches your (also randomly selected) weapon group.

The bar for making an effective DPR machine is pretty low here.

Not really. I've seen a sword and board and a two-weapon fighter in play and the the two-hander fighter is really the only one that keeps up with the other powerful DPS classes like the rogue and barbarian.

I've played a flurry ranger. They do a lot of damage. Problem with the flurry ranger is blow through damage attacking the same target. I had to have the ranger go after targets solo to maximize my DPS or they would often blow right through the creature having it dead by the 2nd or 3rd attack unable to change targets due to the Hunt Prey action tax to make the ability work.

Two-weapon fighter's weapons do less damage due to the lower damage die even with the better chance to hit due to Reactive Strike being such a major part of the fighter's DPS as they level up. So maximizing Reactive Strike is more important for the fighter than the main round hits. That's what causes their DPS to spike high is when the Reactive Strike's start going off. The fighter has no real damage booster during their main hits, so getting as many hits with the big hit bonus is what sets their DPS high. The Reactive Strikes at full BAB with a two-handed weapon really set them apart.

That's why it is hard for me to make any fighter other than a big 2-hander fighter. I have to force my mind to accept suboptimal damage to play a different class fantasy because any fighting style other than big two-hander really doesn't maximize the fighter's abilities.

Another factor that will strongly affect the way that you approach prepared casters vs spontaneous casters and their spell selection is how your party approaches adventures and encounters in the first place. I realized after reading several of the responses here that a large number of folks here are first learning about a dungeon, adventure, encounter by walking into it with the expectation to solve/resolve it immediately and then move on to the next.

The tables I play with the most tend not to take that approach, and are pretty comfortable having a planning/investigating/infiltration/recon day (or even week) followed by an implementing the plan day. On the first kind of days, some combat back up plans are nice, but usually the plan is to run away and regroup before coming back. Not every book of every AP facilitates this, but it is a very common approach we take to dungeons/missions when we can. As a result, it is not uncommon to bring in a bunch of illusory disguises, ventriloquisms, pest forms, illusory objects, disguise magic, knock, lock, etc type spells on one day, and then none of those spells the "go day."

All of this revolves around having a shared understanding of player expectations and party composition. I play mostly with the same couple of groups. None of it is about what just one character can do on their own, it is about helping everyone have fun stuff to do through the whole process of information gathering, infiltration and then executing the plan. Utility spells in PF2 tend not to replace what characters can do with skills, but they can reduce the amount of overspecialization required from skill feat selection and skill increases by the party as a whole by a great margin. If your table is mostly choosing to engage encounters through combat (like 75+% of the time you spend playing) then a couple of scrolls in going to be enough to cover a lot of this stuff. If your party tends to do everything they can to avoid combat until it is absolutely necessary, then it is not uncommon for 75% of...

This does matter.

My players don't like to spend time changing up if they know the can just drive a sword through the enemy to win. They like the most direct and easy to execute route.

If we had a wizard trying to change out spells for most encounters, it would start to irritate my group, especially if it wasn't necessary. They don't mind planning for an infiltration or some special encounter, but they are built to rip apart most encounters and don't want to spend time trying to come up with strategy when the go in and kill them strategy works just fine.

Ah ok i was wondering how to get to master proficiency with weapons like the falcata but just realized it was fighter's advanced weapon training that you can pick up at level 12 through archtype that lets you pick swords and treat all swords as martial weapons.

I'm not worried about that. My DM will let me use Unconventional Weaponry with the Falcata.

I wanted to make the point the size of a spell list is irrelevant to the power of a class or a spell list.

Even a level 20 sorcerer with 47 known spells with a flexible spell known is using about 10% of a spell list. The wizard has a smaller number of spells prepared than the sorcerer in their repertoire and even fewer if they have to double up on a spell.

Spell list size very unimportant variable. Spell quality far more important. Size does not necessarily mean more quality.

Dragon Form would be way too powerful if it let you do all that with one spell. It already gives a lot of amazing abilities all wrapped up in one spell. Giving you adamantine or holy would be pretty crazy for one spell. Maybe a 10th level heightened version could add more, but the base version already does a lot.

A low level improvement I noticed is 60 foot range on some cantrips. That is a nice little upgrade. Makes them more valuable.

Needle Darts, Divine Lance, Slashing Gust. A few more longer range options are nice to have. Frostbite is 60 feet now, used to be 120, so a nerf there. I wouldn't have minded seeing more cantrips with a 60 foot range as that has value at low level when you use cantrips the most.

Spirit Damage makes Divine Lance more fun for divine casters. Definite upgrade and easier to run as a DM. Not having to check alignment for damage runs smoother.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Pronate11 wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Captain Morgan wrote:

AoN lists sorcerers as having 63 feats, and the arcane spell list alone has 684 spells to on it. Does not add much, you say?

It really doesn't, not when only 10 of those feats are any good, and maybe 50 of those spells are any good. When you have only a couple feats over the course of a few levels worth taking, and only a few spells over the course of a few levels worth taking, the idea that there is a decision paralysis to be had doesn't track.

Honestly, the amount of "dead" or nothingburger spells in the Arcane list or class feats for spellcasters, simply means that it's bloated with useless options, it doesn't add much to the decision-making other than another "Nah, this sucks." At best, it makes newer players waste more time to go through a majority of useless options to essentially either stick to the same optimized loadout that most spellcasters already take, and at-worst, they slip into the 'trap' options that Paizo keeps printing out; and players who played spellcasters in the past wonder why they're boring or uninspired.

I feel like you're substantially overestimating how bad most spells are. 90% of spells are absolutely useable. some may be better than others, but they have their uses and are absolutely picked. the other 10% is a problem, but honestly with how many spells they have, only having 10% of them be bad is impressive.

90% is a vast overestimation.

I would say maybe 30% of a spell list is usable, with most being situational. About 10% or lower depending on level are high quality spells that perform well. I would say this for almost any spell list.

If someone is using the other 70%, they are doing it due to boredom with a desire to prove some low quality spell is useful.

How are you defineing "usable"? Because it does not appear to be how most other people define usable. Go to any spell guide (like...

I'm defining usable as in something that is even worth your time to learn and use, even if situationally so.

I had a sorcerer with 47 spells at level 20. That is about 10% of the overall Occult list. And I didn't even use all of those. I could have played and defeated everything in this game with maybe 15 to 20 spells.

Most spells you could never bother reading them much less slotting them in your spell slots and be just fine.

Most spells are generally inferior to some prime option. For example, one of the best blasting spells in the game is chain lightning. You could rely on this spell even in your 9th level spell slots and you won't even care that you didn't pick up meteor swarm or howl of the banshee.

I've read on here some players like to change up their spells for personal tastes, not because the spells actually perform better than a high value spell. That's fine. Personal enjoyment is a good enough reason to try out different spells.

Those spells aren't necessary. If you ignored them, you wouldn't even notice a reduction in performance.

It's why I don't value the arcane list like a player like say Gortle. I have little interest in finding clever ways to use spells using convoluted, unnecessary strategies. I prefer straightforward spells that achieve victory. There are only a handful of those in the game on any of the spell lists. I'm likely being generous with 30% considering even a 20th level caster is barely likely to know 10% of the spells on a given list.

A really diligent wizard or prepared caster player may learn more than 10 or 15%, but very few would ever be so diligent as to even approach 50% of spells known, much less used.

A level 20 non-specialist wizard will only have about 29 prepared spells at a given time absent feats. That's about 5% of the entire Arcane list.

That is why the size of a spell list is about as important me to as telling there are 200 channels on cable. I can only slot so many and I have to be sure I slot good spells. For a wizard, he's often going to slot the same spells in multiple slots due to lack of spontaneous casting and thus further reduce the percentage of spells he will ever use on the arcane list.

I'd be ok losing synesthesia. It's a powerful spell. Not sure it's fun. I don't like spells that are so good they drown out other options. Same reason I don't love trip for combat maneuvers. I'd much rather have spells, maneuvers, and abilities provide the same relative value even if the mechanics are slightly different or the visual is different.

Shields are good for a lot of classes.

Shield Block is a good defensive option. It plays best for a Champion with Shield Divine Ally that boosts its hardness, hit points, and break threshold. Fighter uses it ok. It's pretty decent on a druid as well or cleric.

You have to build the shield up, ensure you have the means to quickly repair it while traveling, and use it intelligently to block. You can block some strong attacks, but at low level the shield will likely break very easy. But once you start picking up Sturdy Shields or Reinforcing Shield Runes, you can greatly improve the shield's ability to block damage.

In real play, the classes I see use it the most are:

Champion with Shield Ally

Druid as it's pretty much free defense.

Most other classes can have trouble using shields as it requires an action to raise it every round to use Shield Block. Not every class has the right action economy or abilities to make a shield shine.

Fighter feats are pretty boring. I almost always find other things to do with my fighter feats than buy fighter feats. You buy your fighting style as a fighter and you're kind of done other than grabbing blindfight or reaction number increasers. You have to focus on a single group of weaopons to max the fighter. It does this one thing really, really well. Barb more fun to build than the fighter.

Rogue feats are amazing.

Cleric did suffer from same problem as the fighter, but now they have a lot of great feats.

Barb definitely needs some feat polishing. When I look at the barb, I only see animal if you want to tank and dragon and giant as great instincts. Every other instinct is campaign specific or bad. Whereas animal, giant, and dragon work in all campaigns and make the barbarian competitive.

The best barb build at the moment is a trip build for single target. For AoE a whirlwind build with giant or some kind of reach enhancing feat or ability.

Every other instinct and feats are lacking. The vengeance builds around Come and Get Me are just bad options.

Cleave is too situational.

I usually archetype into rogue on my barb or maybe mauler to grab the knockdown feats. Right now I'm building a barb rogue archetype working up to Opportune Backstab at level 16. That feat apparently let's you use it with any weapon. Barb has no good reaction feats other than Reactive Strike. I'd love a more appropriate reaction ability that didn't require set up with some "get yourself killed feat" like Come and Get Me.

I thought about this more. I'd like to see the barbarian get the cleric treatment.

The cleric went from a class with tons of dead or boring feats and looked upon as very good but kind of boring to "Damn, I'm not sure what feat to take this level" and "Boy, the cleric is even stronger than it was" just due to clean up of legacy items no longer needed and making their feats more attractive.

So that's what I'd like to see Paizo do with the barbarian. Give it the cleric treatment to polish it up and take off some of the rough edges.

Without Synesthesia, the Arcane and Occult list reach parity. That spell alone set the Occult list clearly above Arcane in my opinion. Without synesthesia Arcane and Occult grow about the same if not Arcane a little better even if less versatile for healing, buffing, and condition removal.

After playing this game a while, one additional thing I enjoy is how easy it is to modify without breaking it. I can add house rules or increase power a bit and the game is still extremely playable and easy to modify to increase difficulty.

So many modular pieces that you can modify a piece for PCs and monsters and balance the game.

A very nice element of the system for home games.

I think even single target slow should be purple myself. Works for 1 round even on a save. No incap save. A critical failure is perhaps the most brutal encounter destroying spell in the game. Almost nothing is immune. Not oozes, not dragons, not undead, almost nothing. Only magic immunity or immune to slow works.

Combines well with other abilities like trip or grapple. Makes spellcasting especially hard if you have to move or do anything else. Eliminates 3 action abilities which can be very powerful and includes summoning spells and walls.

I've never seen a spell short circuit more encounters than slow, even the single target version.

I would miss synesthesia, mostly because it was so powerful.

I would like more options that make other options equally effective. I'm a little tired of trip and reactive strike or synesthesia with true target.

It gets old using the same stuff.

I'm a little surprised at the intensity of the discussion around this feat. From our experience, it's less that the ability is too risky or dangerous and more that it just doesn't accomplish much. Enemies get a small damage bonus (and a debuff that's already easy to apply anyways) and in exchange you get to apply the same debuff back and maybe some THP.

It's less that the feat is going to get you killed, imo, and more that spending a 10th level feat and an action to maybe make someone flat footed is kind of underwhelming.

I'm not sure how your DMs do things.

We tend to focus fire targets with enemies. So all the enemies will take one target and try to put them in the earth. So we try to set things up so that target is a martial, preferably a champion, but if the barb is there it is often the barbarian.

We don't really like to spread out attacks a lot because that makes it too easy for the players to focus fire while the enemy is fighting piecemeal.

So my experience is a barbarian using Come and Get Me with Vengeance Strike getting whacked on by 3 or 4 or more enemies spending all their actions to kill you makes being off-guard an absolute nightmare of pain. The crits are plentiful. You get one Reaction Attack against 9 to 12 or more attacks and you're basically making their second attack hitting almost free. You often increase damage of rogue type enemies.

It's a really, really bad tradeoff.

If you're used to playing piecemeal enemies where your DM puts one or two targets on you and you've got decent combat healing, then I can see your viewpoint where Come and Get Me and Vengeful strike is viewed as a lousy feat. But for our games, it's highly deadly. I won't touch it.

By level 15 your Con is usually 18. So you're getting a 4 point temp hit point gain while giving off-guard and +2 circumstance bonus to damage every single attack. One hit is worth half your temp hit point gain. Multiple hits eat that temp hit point shield. One crit obliterates it. You get one Vengeful Strike in return for those benefits.

I would like Come and Get Me to be a desirable feat again. Right now I use Reactive Strike on my barbarian with trip. It's getting kind of boring. I'd like something else for the barbarian that is good.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

And there is a far superior way to accomplish the same ends.

You know of another equivalent retaliation build? Because the only other one I know is the Parry and Riposte Swashbuckler that is doing way less damage and doesn't attract attention at all.

As for taunting, Come And Get Me is the most powerful taunt in the game. It is actually too powerful most of the time as you'll automatically attract nearly everyone's attention without any way of getting rid of it. So it definitely has usability issues but it's unmatched for what it does.

Of course, a very classical use of Come And Get Me is when you are already Off Guard, like if you are Grappled by an enemy who doesn't want to get rid of you or if you face a higher level Hidden enemy.

And then, you can get into the troll Come And Get Me builds, like the Huge-size Giant Barbarian with Come And Get Me under the effects of Sanctuary (that your Divine caster refreshes if needed). It can even be combined with the retaliation build as being hit can hardly be considered a hostile action. If you want a troll build that severely screws low Will enemies, this one is perfect.

In my opinion, you are looking at Come And Get Me from an extreme optimization standpoint. And I agree it's not the best feat out there, but there are many such feats if all you care about is optimization. I personally like Come And Get Me, both from an RP perspective and because of it's incredible (even if dangerous) effect. I'm just a bit sad it's so high level as I play my Barbarian in PFS and as such I will certainly never get there.

Come and Get Me is an end up dead ability. It will absolutely get the barbarian wrecked. It needs improvement. I don't know why you would argue the effectiveness of some ability that needs a rework.

When I say accomplish the same end, I mean using a reaction attack. There is one reaction attack. If you use it for Vengeful Strike, it's gone for everything else. Barbarians don't get extra reactions.

"Retaliation" builds that get you face planted are not retaliation builds. They are "Hey, I'm dead" builds.

The only thing you will find out with Come and Get Me if you use it at high level is a lot of creatures have precision damage that a barbarian can normally avoid with Deny Advantage and that it will lead to far more damage than your retaliation build will do. You will also be open to big hits from casters and bosses, on top of such creatures with DR that will ignore damage shields.

I am not sure if you played PF1, but Come and Get Me in PF1 was a power ability. It absolutely let you destroy your enemy and was well-designed for the High Risk-High Reward style of play. It truly fulfilled its purpose.

This new Come and Get Me isn't a taunt or a retaliation build or even cool RP any more. It's just a way to get your barbarian absolutely wrecked.

It doesn't create a High Risk-High Reward playstyle. It creates a High risk-low reward playstyle that should be heavily avoided.

This is not just from an optimization standpoint. It's from a "Does this do what it is supposed to do?" The answer is nope, it doesn't.

Cleave is too limited and that is why it's not great. But can be situationally useful like Swipe.

Come and Get Me is just a straight up cruelty to the barbarian. One of the biggest advantages to the barbarian defensively is Deny Advantage. This basically throws that defensive ability away and sets you up for the worst of every single attack enemies have to offer on top of every saving throw and effect from them.

All you get in return is a single Vengeful Strike.

That is an absolutely terrible trade off. I hope they rework this ability for use by the barbarian. Off guard is seriously bad mojo enabling a whole lot of nasty abilities the barbarian usually avoids.

I'll stop beating the dead horse. Boy, I really do dislike when someone argues for some ability they haven't extensively used and is truly bad and needs a rework. It leaves the ability in a bad place.

If you want to see why, spec up some barbs and put them in a variety of situations using Come and Get Me, then see how it goes DMing with at least mild intelligent use of actions. It gets real, real for the barbarian. It's investing two high level feats to get yourself faceplanted a whole bunch that could be better spent om something else.

I've played three barbarians now. Two to 17 and one to 13. I never touch that ability. I gave it a shot on my first barbarian way back when and he got absolutely trashed due to the crit rules, precision damage, ranged attackers, and the like before I got rid of it.

One single Vengeance Strike for one single hit by one single target was an absolutely terrible tradeoff. The enemy often ended up doing more damage to you than you did to it and far, far more damage as a group than you do.

At level 12 plus enemies have tons of hit points, hit pretty hard, and little damage shields against enemies with 200 plus hit points each and possible DR getting reducing your AC by 3 with a damage bonus isn't in anyway a worthwhile trade off.

Gortle wrote:

High risk high reward can work if there is a big heal spell coming

Yep, that's the big issue of "high risk high reward" on a class: You can't be sure there'll be a big heal coming and as such you can end up with an unplayable class depending on the party.

That's why I quite like current Barbarian design which is less "high risk high reward" and more of a classical martial. You don't need a specific party to support you. And there's still the Giant Instinct if you really want the "high risk high reward" gameplay, but at least the other Instincts are playable whatever the party.

YuriP wrote:

PF2 is a game where you can survive without a dedicated healer but this cleary changes the game difficult and risks.

I nearly never play with a dedicated healer for a simple reason: I generally play the healer and I'm not dedicated at all. But I've sometimes played with one. Overall, I've found them to be mostly unimpactful, they could have stayed at the inn the adventure would have been the same. As such I prefer to play without one as they increase fight duration for no good reason to me. So I guess there are very different experiences when it comes to dedicated healers. PF2 is a game where you can easily survive without a dedicated healer, I assure you. Now what makes some parties so reliant on one is a mystery...

Not sure what was being mentioned.

But Come and Get Me with Vengeful Strike is not high risk-high reward at all.

It's high risk-bad reward play. You are literally setting yourself up to die for a single Vengeful Strike and a bonus you could get in a variety of other ways.

The calculus for Come and Get Me and Vengeful Strike is so bad that only a someone that could not possibly understand the game mechanics would ever take this absolutely high risk-bad reward series of feats.

I would account this one of the worst options on the barbarian list.

Come and Get Me: Give all attackers off-guard and a +2 circumstance bonus to damage. What do you gain? If they hit you, they are off-guard, but will likely do so much damage you will get absolutely wrecked.

You get in return a single vengeful strike against a single attacker. If you hit you get a 3 to 6 Temporary hit points that don't stack. Eaten in to by the +2 circumstance bonus to damage every attacker gets against you.

You lose your reaction to use an Attack of Opportunity, meaning the enemy can literally swing a couple of times, then just move out of your range they feel like it further setting you up for failure.

Ranged attackers also get the off-guard against you.

IF the targets have precision damage based on off-guard, you take damage from that.

Casters get off-guard against you.

Casters, ranged attackers, as well as all melee get a +2 circumstance bonus to damage against you.

Ranged attackers will get their precision damage against you for being off-guard if they have that agility.

Come and Get Me is one of the worst designed abilities in the entire game at setting up any class for getting absolutely wrecked.

It's just a terrible ability and another example of an ability that was a must have, game breaking ability in PF1 that was nerfed into non-use in PF2.

It is not high risk-high reward play. It's high risk-low reward play.

If it were high risk-high reward like the old Come and Get Me, everyone would be taking it. It's an extremely bad, bad idea in PF2.

Which is why I hope they find a mid-ground when they Remaster the barbarian if they keep Come and Get Me which they will likely rename or change completely.

As I see it right now, Come and Get Me far too good in PF1. It is far too bad in PF2. If kept in some form, needs to be reworked into some kind of worthwhile choice middle ground.

Captain Morgan wrote:

exequiel759 wrote:

Demorome wrote:

HeHateMe wrote:

As you mentioned, that shrugging off attacks fantasy no longer works cuz lowering AC opens Barbarians up to eating more crits. When I played a Barbarian I didn't feel tough at all, I felt extremely fragile. Not at all the experience I was expecting. Hopefully they dump the AC penalty in the Remaster, or if they want to keep it then Barbs need damage resistance from lvl 1. Temp HPs don't even come close to making up for the AC penalty.

Yup, I think another solution could be that enemies now have to beat your lowered AC by +11 instead of +10 to crit, but that might be tricky to remember...

If we have to jump through so many loops to solve the -1 to AC, why don't remove it? As we already discussed the -1 AC goes against the basic idea of barbarians being tanks that shrug off blows as they get hit and crit more often.

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You keep saying this like this is a universally held consensus. It is not. Not getting hit is diametricly opposed to how barbarians are supposed to tank hits. Not getting crit, sure. Not going down super quickly, sure. But getting hit is part of the basic idea. See: Wolverine, Ultra Ego Vegeta, Metal Bat, and various other berserker types.

Ummm...Conan is THE ORIGINAL Barbarian, and in the Robert Howard stories he was described as having the reflexes of a cobra, or a panther, when he went berserk. He hardly ever took a hit, bad guys would end up hitting each other cuz he was so fast.

I wasn't as big a fan of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, tho I read a couple of their stories and I recall Fafhrd being fast and an excellent swordsman, not someone who stood around and got stabbed alot.

The whole "face tanking" thing has nothing to do with Barbarians in literature. As far as I know, it was a D&D invention that Barbarians were too stupid to duck a hit.

Logan Ninefingers facetanks as far as I know.

The historical berserker was also known to take blows and shrug them off killing until he died.

Conan was never really known to go berserk. In D&D Conan is usually a fighter. He was trained to be a fighter that fought in a very controlled manner with great skill.

I've never seen Conan as the model for the D&D barbarian as nothing in his stories simulates the D&D barbarian.

I always figured they based the D&D barbarian off the historical berserker from legend. A lunatic who enters a battle frenzy and starts killing everyone until they are dead or he is dead, shrugging off blows and nearly unstoppable while raging.

I have not noticed the barbarian being easy to bring down past the low levels. They do a lot of damage too. Their have a lot of good quality feats.

A giant barb using Whirlwind attack with an ogre hook can be truly brutal. Or just hammering on some creature multiple times.

I tend to build barbs as knockdown specialists as I do with most two-handed martials and monks. So you can control your enemies with knockdown, then hammer with a Reactive Strike to regain the attack lost to the trip. On top of taking feats to do damage when you trip.

I also consider barbs an encounter ender class. If they get on a roll with crits, they do so much damage that the encounter ends up being over quickly. The faster you kill, the less damage is done to you.

Sure, they are easier to crit and hit, but they also do a lot of damage which nearly nothing is immune to, not precision immunity and they punch through DR better than any other class at higher level.

The things I'd like to see are the following:

1. Smoother low level experience because at low level when they do go down easy, losing rage is extremely frustrating and can cause a player to give up on the class early because of that weakness.

Rage needs to be much easier to turn back on if dropped or hit with some spell that calms emotions or something. It's their only ability.

2. More diverse builds. Differences in rage damage and feats really push barbs into very select builds far superior to other builds.

Giant and dragon for damage.

Animal for tanking.

3. More reaction strike abilities. They get one reaction forever. AoO is their best reaction because Come and Get Me and Vengeance Strike are too costly with all the other AC reduction abilities to take. It is far too costly for one reaction strike that you can set up far more effectively with trip with a higher cost-benefit by far.

You really have to improve the cost-benefit of other reactions.

Making Cleave or Come and Get Me/Vengeful Strike more worthwhile to take and use would be nice.

Right now having played multiple barbs, it's far better to build a trip barbarian with Reactive Strike by such a huge margin that I everyone pretty much ignores the other reaction abilities because they are so bad.

Giving everyone flat-footed and a bonus to damage against you for one vengeful strike? Who thought that cost-benefit up?

If you're fighting mooks, you're going to get wiped out by the sheer number of attacks for one Vengeful Strike against moooks.

If you're fighting a boss, their hit roll is so high they are going to do far more damage to you with a higher crit chance than your reactive strike and you have off-guard likely anyway from standard flanking or tripping them.

So you have these dead feats only new players might take until they find out they are bad options.

Be nice if the barb vengeance striker with Come and Get me was built as a more attractive option that can at least compete with a Trip barb.

Same with the cleave reaction user.

Those are the types of fixes I would like. The -1 AC is fine in my opinion. The animal warrior tank build works well for the barb.

As a player of 3 barbarians to level 16 plus. A giant, a dragon, and an elemental barbarian, the giant and dragon are the best and the elemental is not bad in a dual class campaign with a kineticist. Not sure I would play elemental without being a dual class kineticist. I'd like to see things more evened out so other barbarian options are more attractive, preferably not by nerfing giant and dragon.

Accurate Flurry is APG/pre-remaster content.

Here's the text of the original Impossible Flurry:

Quote:

You forgo precision to attack at an impossible speed. Make three melee Strikes with each of the required weapons. All of these Strikes take the maximum multiple attack penalty, as if you had already made two or more attacks this turn.

So basically the remaster just added the level 20 feat's effect into the level 18 feat instead of keeping them separate.

Thanks, Squggit. That explains it.

So Ranger did get a few nice improvements. So they can take something else at level 20. Good to see.

As a DM, I see the barbarian as a tank that tanks by doing lots of damage or controlling a target with combat maneuvers.

Barbs don't have any particular advantage in skills other than Athletics.

A very strength-focused rage class able to do high single target and melee AoE damage. Punishes enemies for ignoring them.

I think that role is attractive to quite a few players.

Bluemagetim wrote:

Perhaps the solution is Temp HP regen while raging?

What are we 'solving' though? The Barbarian's in a very good place as is, and changing things just for the sake of changing things (buff their ac but lower their hp, etc.) isn't really a 'fix' to anything.

Barbarian is in a mostly good place. Could use some smoothing over at lower levels.

From a DMing and player perspective, I think they could get rid of the rage rest duration. Barb should just be able to rage like a monk does stances or a rogue sneak attacks at this point.

It's the same type of mechanic for the barbarian. They are either raging or they are a weak fighter. They should just be able to rage all the time lasting until fights are over.

I think that is what I would do in the Remaster. Design rage to be an always on mechanic with no rest or between duration. It's part of the barbarian attack abilities. Why screw around limiting it when it's all they can do and nearly every one of their powers keys off it.

It's not like PF1 where you had daily rounds to spend on it as needed per fight. It has to be on or the barbarian is a very bad fighter. It should just have an off and on switch with no need to rest or think much about durations.

Some of the take as good as it gives doesn't work at all. Come and Get Me and anything that further lowers AC for one reactive strike is a very, very sad exchange. It isn't countered by having 12 hit points at all.

Whoever mathed that out did some really bad math because I mathed it out and I would never take Come and Get Me and Vengeful Strike.

Basically the current way they have built Come and Get Me with Vengeful Strike looks like a scene where the tough guy goes, "Come and get me you bastards." He takes one swing as they come in and kick the living crap out of him leaving him beat down on the ground, while they laugh about the idiot tough guy they just beat down while sharing beers together.

That mechanic doesn't work with PF2 mooks and monsters with the new crit rules and high hit chances of even mooks. Very bad design IMO. It's an unusable mechanic that will lead you to faceplant often.

Barbarian is rough if you get anything that kills rage. That is definitely true. I was face planted the other day with my barbarian and I could not rage for the rest of the battle. I was a weak fighter.

A smoother ride at low levels would be nice.

Are the Sahkil Paizo only? I don't recall them in D&D. But they removed the Sahkil feats from the Remaster Nephilim on Archives of Nethys, so you can't be a Sahkil-blooded Nephilim.

Or can you use the old feats if you can find them?

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Animal companion becomes fairly useless after level 16. Can't breach DR. Doesn't do much damage. Attack roll is ok and AC not bad on a nimble companion. Saves are fine. Hit points fine.

Damage too low and lack of ability to penetrate DR or move in three dimensions if not choosing a bird makes them feel like a sort of tacked on useless bunch of feats.

It is still a sponge and still can grapple.

I have not found this to be true. If you build a strength based AC, it will get hit far more often and pretty much destroyed by AoE effects.

If you build a dex-based AC, it doesn't grapple very well at all.

AC not really disposable hit points. It's hit points you have to heal, track, and conditions you have to keep track of. Unless you're roleplaying absent any personality, your character and the party probably don't want to see your AC suffer and die.

Animal companion becomes fairly useless after level 16. Can't breach DR. Doesn't do much damage. Attack roll is ok and AC not bad on a nimble companion. Saves are fine. Hit points fine.

Damage too low and lack of ability to penetrate DR or move in three dimensions if not choosing a bird makes them feel like a sort of tacked on useless bunch of feats.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Captain Morgan wrote:

Confusion is in a weird spot. You basically need to use it against one enemy in a group (or heighten it to multitarget) so it isn't just losing actions but attacking its allies. That's hard to guarantee given the random targeting and short range, but I've tended to let distance be a factor in randomness at least.

The Raven Black wrote:

I feel Calm Emotions has it even worse. Even just a hostile action from one of the target's allies is enough to end the effect. It does not even need to inflict damage.

Does it? That interpretation seems heavily contested. It certainly isn't what the spell itself says, but there might be nested definitions of hostility.

Hostility is even wider than a Hostile Action, so the DM is doing what the designers should have done and defined it better. Hostility means nothing in PF2 as far as the rules go, so a DM could make screaming a harsh word at the creature break calm emotions.

A hostile action is definitely going to break it, not sure how else you can read hostility.

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I dunno, I always ran it as not breaking if you attack a creature's ally. The fascinated specifically says the condition ends if the enemy is attacked, and Calm (Emotions) does not. That makes it one of the best spells in the game, but I know I'm not alone in that reading. I only recently became aware people felt otherwise.

What do you mean? Black Raven wrote one of your allies can hit you and break calm emotions. He didn't say it broke if someone attacked their allies. He means if you use calm emotions and someone succeeds at their save, they can break the effect on their other allies by taking a hostile action on them without doing damage like attempting to hit them without even landing any damage.

Not sure how you could read that differently.

Unicore wrote:

When I see dispel magic used most frequently in combat encounters is against traps and hazard where it can be a one shot kill, although I have seen it used against spells like fly and fly like magical effects too.

Edit: also, a high rank dispel magic counters any lower rank effect even on a failure. So it can often be much greater than 50/50.

This was how I used Dispel Magic on my sorc-turned-summoner in our Age of Ashes campaign. Spoilers here if someone is playing it. ** spoiler omitted **

We handled the same hazard the following way.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Everyone touts the number of spells on a spell list, but the reality is a spell list could have 400 plus spells on it and only 20 to 30 will see consistent use and 50 to 80 inconsistent use. The rest are just filler spells that may be situational or just bad and tacked on to add content to a book. This is the part no one much mentions when touting the number of spells on a spell list. I'd much rather see a tally of what casters actually use on a spell list consistently. That number would be much, much smaller and likely redundant across lists. A larger spell list in no way is indicative of the quality of the spells on the list.

I think the heart of our disagreement is that I see "situational" spells as useful spells to be able to cast when you know you are entering into those situations, which spontaneous casters can only really cover with scrolls, so probably only once, and requiring access to a magic store in the time between knowing they will be useful and needing to use them.

Prepared casters generally need a day to accomplish similar tasks, with wizards sometimes needing a day and access to a magic shop, but because that aspect of prepared casting is so much fun to me, Spell Substitution makes for a play style that no other class can touch, which is why I spend so much of my gold on scrolls as well. I agree that it tends to require a lot more preparation on the part of the player coming into sessions, but it doesn't usually take much time away from the game, as everyone usually wants to rest at least 10 minutes after an encounter anyways and that is usually enough time for me to figure out what spells I want to change around.

I think there is a lot of table variation on how often that happens, and how often GMs will make sure to give casters the time to go buy scrolls that will be obviously useful for the upcoming encounter.

Do you ever think about what some of these classes can do?

1. The bard has an ability called Esoteric Polymath which allows them to keep a spellbook to switch out or expand the number of signature spells per day. So they can switch out a spell on a daily basis and how often do you need to switch out multiple spells daily? I don't mean you want to do it, but how often do you really need to?

This is on top of having charisma as main stat which allows them to use skills to handle a lot of situations a wizard would need spells to handle with Diplomacy or Intimidation or what not.

By level 20 the Polymath bard can switch out spells for any list. The bard basically becomes a caster capable of casting spells from any list on top of all their bard composition abilities and charisma skills being a major strength for manipulating or influencing targets.

2. Sorcerer:
Arcane Sorcerer has Arcane evolution. This allows them to keep a spellbook and change out at least one spell a day as needed from the arcane list or have a flexible arcane spell daily they can use for whatever they need.

Occult Evolution: As I stated, Occult Evolution allows you to eliminate a ton of spells with the mental trait and add them as needed on a daily basis. You can do this as needed since it only takes you 1 minute to grab it when you needed it. So it's a very flexible spell slot.

This is on top of Bloodline Evolution which allows you to cherry pick a spell off another list.

Then Greater Mental Evolution at level 18 allows you to expand your Spell Repertoire to 45 spells for Arcane or Occult.

Now the oracle and psychic are more limited. But the bard and sorcerer have a pretty large amount of built in flexibility as casters. The bard's flexibility is the best in the game at the highest possible level. The bard for some reason is the true master of magic at level 20. Why is that the case? Doesn't that seem a little crazy to you?

When I see dispel magic used most frequently in combat encounters is against traps and hazard where it can be a one shot kill, although I have seen it used against spells like fly and fly like magical effects too.

Edit: also, a high rank dispel magic counters any lower rank effect even on a failure. So it can often be much greater than 50/50.

In PF1 I used dispel magic a ton. I used to keep quickened dispel magics to quickly strip enemies or remove effects off allies.

Everything is so temporary and easy to remove in this edition. Even in PF1 a dispel magic could be real good against mirror image. But in PF2 you can remove mirror image fairly quickly as only a critical fail on a hit roll fails to remove an image and there are only 3 images. Mirror image ends up getting removed without expending any permanent resources in a round or two depending on what people are doing. It used to be a much stronger spell.

So hard for me to justify its use. Then when using it against a powerful effect, you have to heighten it real high or you might fail. Using a super high spell slot for a dispel magic for a 40 to 50 percent success chance is also hard to justify and not particularly fun.

So I leave the dispel's to chance. And so far after multiple APs and 17 plus level characters, I haven't found dispel to be that important like it was in PF1. Dispel magic was a must take in PF1 and now it's a maybe you'll use it and feel like it did something once in a blue moon.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I usually take slow and not fireball as my 3rd level signature spell.

Really good spells with only two points of heightening like slow, invisibility, or fear are actually really good candidates for taking multiple times individually, rather than as signature spells.

I personally prefer to save my signature spells for spells that have heighten effects at several ranks, or every rank. Selecting a two-option spell (especially one that might not see any benefit for several levels) just seems like a waste or a precious signature spell slot.

I use slow so often that I prefer to use it in every available slot. I know it's boring, but it's hard to talk myself out of not using it as it only has one chance of utterly failing. In these short combats, even 1 round of slow against a boss monster is just brutal to that monster, especially when combined with a group that uses trip or some other maneuver.

Slow is the uber spell of PF2. The only counter is usually haste and immunity to slow. Haste can be fairly common depending on if a lot of casters in the module, but immunity to slow is super rare unless fighting golems or will-o-wisps who are immune to all spells.

When you have this spell 90 percent plus chance of doing something very effective, it's hard not to use it when so many other spells fail 50/50 doing almost nothing. I also use synesthesia a lot, but not as often as slow.

I am finding wail of the banshee is better than I thought it was. Hits only enemies. Full damage on a successful save. Brutal drained condition on a fail and drained 4 on a critical fail. What a hammer spell.

I've played around with modifying the wizard. The only modification that puts them on par for what they are supposed to be good is spontaneous prepared casting meaning they can change out their spell list and cast it as needed with their slots. Then their versatility really shines.

It's too hard to match the on demand versatility of a sorcerer taking high value spells with signature spells giving their slots more and more on demand flexibility on top of everything else.

Then they get Bloodline Evolution to cherry pick a spell off another list.

When I hit 18, I took Greater Mental Evolution which boosted my spell options from 36 to 45, 46 if you include Occult Evolution which allowed me to eliminate a ton of mental spells I could not need all the time and could take with 1 minute of downtime once per day.

Everyone touts the number of spells on a spell list, but the reality is a spell list could have 400 plus spells on it and only 20 to 30 will see consistent use and 50 to 80 inconsistent use. The rest are just filler spells that may be situational or just bad and tacked on to add content to a book. This is the part no one much mentions when touting the number of spells on a spell list. I'd much rather see a tally of what casters actually use on a spell list consistently. That number would be much, much smaller and likely redundant across lists. A larger spell list in no way is indicative of the quality of the spells on the list.

Doomed condition does nothing to an eidolon as an Eidolon never dies. The summoner gets knocked unconscious and the eidolon unmanifests. The eidolon doesn't exist without the summoner manifesting it.

So there are no real rules to allow an eidolon to die, thus the doomed condition never has effect. Or dying or wounded.

Nowhere does it indicate the eidolon and summoner share conditions. So conditions that will never apply to an eidolon like doomed or dying or wounded never apply to the eidolon.

One of the unwritten advantages of the shared hit point pool. It's why I started to see the advantages of the single hit point pool as it provided some advantages to the summoner that were unusual for a PC. Not sure they were intended, but they are very powerful given the eidolon can operate a hundred feet from you and heal at two points.

Another reason why the summoner is a fairly powerful class in PF2.

Because it makes the game more fun and fits the anthropomorphic model of gods that was prevalent in the ancient world in mythology.

It is more integral to the class than Bardic Lore. We already saw what happens when you have a skill-based martial that can fail a lot. So they designed the Thaumaturge skill-based mechanic to not fail like the Swashbuckler.