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I want ancestries to get more love. Every new class scares me for how it changes the game. Thematically I would rather these have be archetypes, but I see people are really excited about the playtest material so far so I won't be a downer on it. I just think next time, after Daredevil and Slayer, we might try to shore up other areas of the game which do not see as many updates.
And as a second thought, remember that you have options a fighter and barb will never have at the cost of that -1 or -2 to hit comparatively.
For me that has always been the trade off. If you can be Huge, be Huge, its awesome. And not everyone can get huge for a focus spell! (I do wish it wasn't 2 Actions though. It does make the first turn pretty boring)
I mostly just want the forms to keep scaling. If I want to be a wolf because Untamed Form is my reflavoring of a werewolf PC, then I would like to be able to commit the form without it eventually having a hard stop on progression. I get wanting to do some magic in Untamed Form because I too try to make that my first move in combat and end the day with way to many unspend spellslots, but that would be to powerful so instead I would ask for a shifter class or shifter like class arch for the druid which becomes like the non-magic shapeshifter.
The theme is that it is the wilds of darkland. It exists as a space which only has hints of the abomination vaults above and the empty vault below. Though the open spaces seem empty you are making very frequent random encounter rolls. So while the space around the PCs seems empty, there is always something on the hunt which could ambush them around any corner or from any dense patch of mushrooms. Things are very close together, if you want to space things out, I say go for it. Its already one of the biggest tactical grid maps I have seen in TTRPGs. So I didn't change anything distance wise, but I get it. Its not the Drow and Urdefhan at war, thats to grand. Its two bad neighbors who skirmish with each other when they meet in the Hunting Grounds. While they do hate each other this is actual just normal behavior regardless. For Belcorra I had her hunting them. For me the basins were where she learns about the PCs progress then takes the initiative. All she has is time on her hands, she might as well be actively hunting them. So put the fights anywhere including and even maybe preferably in a location she hasn't planned. And changes, I don't have anything more interesting than just adjusting for the group. I've run this twice and one group got a Legacy and one group got a Remaster Golem in the vault. I just checked if they had spells that would work. And I made Belcorra mythic to be a grander encounter, but at the same time made the Roseguard items relics which gave PCs a power boost against her, again just to make each encounter a grand spectacle.
I never thought the remaster needed to be as rushed as it is. Yes the OGL crisis gave Paizo a reasonable scare, but the backlash got WOTC to back down, for now. It has been 3 years or so since the Crisis and WOTC hasn't tried that stunt again. That is not to say they never will again, but it is to say that when it became clear WOTC lost that fight against its own community, it should have been a sign for Paizo to slow down, recognize the remaster didn't need to be so rushed and to do more proofreading and playtesting. Hindsight being 20/20 we know they had the time. I would hazard to say we knew we had the time then as WOTC wasn't going to try the again while the community was still fuming. Yes I think there has been a down turn in quality and I wish they would just slow the hell down.
B8 the maze in the sewers of xer are the A and B walls in the north that are adjacent to each other labelled the wrong way round? Because otherwise you can't get to the B button to lower the walls because you need to get through B walls to get to the B button. Unless I'm missing something.This is an error that crept through on the map that we missed clearing up, alas. The wall behind the southernmost "B" location should be empty, allowing passage through that area. I am sorry but what does this mean? The Southern most B wall is the wall to the C switch. How does that get us into the north west corner? What does it mean the wall is "empty"
The point of a thread like this is to discuss if something needs to be homebrewed and the best ideas for a homebrew. Lots of GMs will make their decision without ever coming to this thread, but it exists anyways for those that do, and for us to vent a little on what is (some of us but not all believe) is a silly rule. As for SFS2, it has already been a little bit of a mess. Like we just have to ignore the fact that in Frozen Moon we all die because environmental protections don't cover this kind of cold, and its not till late levels that we can. Its a small example, but it goes to show this roll out is to fast for the designers and the scenario writers to get on the same page.
While I agree that casters feeling compelled to be Key Attribute 4 and Dex 3 so they don't die is to rigid, its also something that I've already accepted since it is all over PF2e. I definitely misunderstood your intentions for Medium Armor, but I still believe this doesn't actually make FORTRUN more durable, only opening options. A Light Armor FORTRUN can take Hardlight Series (or similar) and have full AC with only a -1 to Stealth, Piloting, and Thievery. Not great, but better than a -2 to those skills from Medium armor. If you avoid the -2 from Medium it means being MAD as I mentioned before and I am not sure how appealing that will actually be for players. They won't be DPS++ and the stat is -2 to the martial they are standing next to so they won't be using that Strength for anything else except Athletics rolls. I just think there are better options than opening up the Medium armor options, but I am also resigned to the formula that Casters get light (if any) armor and you choose a skill penalty or a suboptimal AC.
I do think it was as easy as having two classes, because the two oracles share names and themes but are very distinct. Legacy Oracle which can only take Oracle feats from APG, and Remaster which can only take Oracle feats in PC2. It was a choice to reuse names which counts as an overriding errata onto the class. The mysteries and curses could have had different names to preserve the uniqueness of Legacy content. Or they could have more simply not say anything we rename is changed forever. And you're right, Unicore, this broken promise probably wouldn't sting if Oracle got Alchemist treatment. Alch cannot go back to Legacy either, which might suck except every post I've seen and ever Alch player I have talked to thinks Remaster Alch is a 100% improvement. You are right that the difference is that there are some of us who despise remaster Oracle, and we don't think the change forced in PFS was reasonable after we got a promise. Call me old fashioned, but if you can't stand by your words, don't say them. It is easier to be silent.
You are losing sight of what Tridus is actually saying. The errata is one thing, it changes a class but this is supposed to be okay because legacy characters were promised to always be viable. If the player wanted to be a remaster Oracle, they could have, but they didn't want to and we were told that was going to be okay. Then we find out PFS-Paizo is breaking its promise. Legacy Oracle is not playable, then the official response from the representative from the company was frankly insulting. I didn't leave the game, but I am a lot less excited about everything remaster now and I haven't bought a rulebook since PC2. Am I alone in this? Maybe, but it only being a small problem doesn't make it okay to dismiss.
This suggests the fix is just a manual button to turn on the EP or to adjust the sensor to search not for a vacuum but for a lack of breathable air. This is literally what a smoke detector does. Its extremely simple technology and if corps won't supply it, it should be the easiest and cheapest jailbreak of a system possible and would dramatically improve the effectiveness of EP
Well it doesn't sound like she plays SFS then, ironic. Not everything in the errata threads is a five alarm emergencies. So far nothing has destroyed the game, but there is a difference between a small grammatical change and a core feature of a class. You literally can't homebrew everything.
That is a glaring indictment on the company which cannot manage their own rules team to come to a simple consensus. They can write books which work more than they fail, but they cannot settle simple questions? And the number of spells a simple question to answer should absolutely be the highest priority. It is the easiest question with one of the biggest impacts. VTTs are easy to homebrew, I don't know where that idea came from , but PFS is impossible to homebrew. This makes PFS games worse because we can't just say its okay we will homebrew this. You have to play what is written in the book. The books says two different things. This creates table variance which isn't going to be okay with Oracle players. Also excusing missed errata with "the GMs will handle it" is the attitude that a lot of us fled away from in the dnd5e community. To not have an easily understood default is a negative against the game that makes it harder for me to sell this game to my dnd friends if it isn't true that it is a game you can find a reliable ruling in.
As a GM I wouldn't want loans because I wouldn't know how to handle it. It would be a sudden surge of money which might get them an item beyond their level which could then break the balance. I suppose not every group has a problem with that, but what about repayment? Adventures are usually pretty short experiences anyways so will we ever expect a loan to be meaningfully paid off? Is it one big purse and one interest payment before the campaign ends? If you don't pay your loan do you start sending collections to the PCs? If they cheat the bank would they kill the collectors too? Does the Bank of Abadar back its loans with absurdly powerful angels? Overall its more than I want to deal with. A piece of paper saying the PC is good for X amount of money though? I have no problem with that. Coins weigh so little, and platinum makes even big sums manageable that this seems more narrative than anything else. You want to have this be a think in our game it is easy enough I don't even think about it. On the FVTT I make a new treasure in your sheet and call it "Bank Bill for X amount" and then call it done. Again, coin weight is so small this really is just a narrative thing for a character. I believe there is even a "recent" adventure with something like the former if you want to stress canonicity. IIRC Night of the Grey Death has an encounter with a banker who promises you a reward but can only pay it out in what is effectively a check.
I hope that that line from the blog post becomes true. So far there is still no level 10+ content which isn't homebrew or playtest. As selfish as it is I am drawn to the incentive of glyphs and chronicles. I want to play APs, but if I have to pick between ones that give chronicles and GM credits vs ones that don't I am going to pick the former every time. There is enough PF2e content which I know is worth playing and will even give me a little reward for doing so that I am not going to even look at Murder in Metal City, Guilt of the Graveworld, and everything after it if they cannot do the same. I would be okay with it doing nothing more than XP and Credits, plus GM credit if GM. I would like to play more Starfinder so that is all I really need. If there is anyone else like me who would buy more SF2e if it felt as incentivized as PF2e, then this could be a serious marketing mistake for a game that really needs to put its best foot forward.
Unfortunately, with all the old reviews gone from the new store, I have no way to see what high-level scenarios are unloved or why. Is there something about the high-level scenarios that people didn't like? Monkhound already made 2 good points. I would say though that at this level the complexity of events gets out of hand. This has two effects, first there are more editting errors than normal. Another is that the scenarios take a buttload of time. These are not scenarios you fit into the four hour mold. They will go over because everything is even at its most basic a big bucket of hit points for each fight and usually overly elaborate subsystems. I want to stress that its not all high level, and this exists in lower levels too, but its so much of the 9+ content that it kind of does feel like all of them even when it isn't.Apart from that they do tell interesting stories (at least imo), its just mechanically they become to much of a slog to enjoy. That might be anecdotal, but it is what I have experienced and heard from others I have played with. If nothing else its true to me. I would be happy to be wrong and really overblowing the problems.
"I don't follow PF2E news closely, but for SF2E, scenarios are capped at 10th level. The reason given seems ot be to address exactly the problem you are talking about." We shouldn't need a level cap this low when currently we can start at level 7 and all scenarios are repeatable. Sorry for stating the obvious but higher level tables are hard to play because there are only so many scenarios which can get you to that level. In Pf2e there are enough repeatable scenarios to take you to level 6. This is nowhere near enough. 1-4 repeatable are abundant. Getting to level 5 is easy but to get higher than 6 you really have to hope a 5-8 you haven't played before is offered up. As you get to 9-12 it really is a desert. I see a lot of Replays spent here on Warhorn because its just a requirement to play. On warhorn I see unloved scenarios get filled with a huge waitlist because they are high level and its a rare chances to bring out of retirement. That is all to say people want high level content and it is madness that when we get the shortcut and the endless repeatable that they put the level cap so low, then blame it on us for not being able to fill the same number of tables was 9-12s as we do with 1-4s.
But flight is an extremely powerful adventuring ability. The reasoning falls apart when we remember how useful in exploration and combat flight is. Even if a level 1 Strix adventurer has a max to hit of +3, they would ultimately be doing better than other level 1 adventurers.
Setting Magus aside, the problem with it is that the Dedication is way out of whack with other Dedication feats. It gives you a LOT for a single feat, including the signature ability of the class.Is it the signature ability of the class? Ultimately they're just focus spells. Unleash would be the better comparison point as a unique feature that can't be poached. That it's lackluster is unfortunate, but that doesn't change that it is a unique action locked to the class that can't be poached. I don't think there is anything about Unleash Psyche which couldn't be poached if Paizo wanted it to be part of an archetype. So it isn't really different from Amp. Since UP sucks and Amp doesn't people use AMP, focusing on it while forgetting about UP entirely. I have a Psychic in my AoA game which has never UP but Amps every fight. We are starting the 4th book soon, that is how little UP matters. It is not the signature ability which people want; If Psychic dedication came with UP and not AMP people still wouldn't use UP.
I think we can agree Trick Magic Item should be a baseline feature that didn't require a skill feat, so personally I wouldn't really put it as a benefit of spellcasting dedications even if it technically is. Similar to how rogues and a few other classes were the only ones that could disarm magic traps in PF1e. If thats true they missed their chance with Tailwind. They had the chance to fix the spell as a remaster erata or remaster new spell and they didn't so they must not have been to bothered by it. Not like most buff spells weren't short length anyways. Most buff spells that came out at the same time were 1 minute. Some were 10, rarely more than that.
I played this scenario with the author. I probed the author about going with the Functionary. He was pretty clear we die. Which isn't the best because thats not written in the scenario, but there is the "word of god". Do to the nature of the scenario your group might be a little mad at you for missing what happens next. (I will say no more)
To add to this with my own military experience, firing to suppress and firing to kill are so drastically different if we are using that as a metric for how it makes sense in SF2e then it would also make sense that Auto-Fire (to be specific to the kind of weapon talked about above) should give your enemies a +4 to their reflex save, though apply Suppressed to all but the Crit Success. Spraying and Praying doesn't get you the results that we see in SF2e. It also isn't 2x number of targets for ammo expended either. I think Paizo is wrong to not factor in training to Area/Auto weapons, but as was mentioned above they are committed to it, so get used to it.
I still run legacy wizard in a home game and never remade my legacy wizard to remaster in PFS. I don't care if the new schools are fun to read they aren't fun to play. Any player could have written about their school in a backstory. Paizo didn't actually add anything but ideas. Wizards needed feats, not schools. Some new thesis ideas would be interesting, but at this point I just want all the thesises (thesi?) as part of the wizard chassis. I want them to have more skills with extra improvements (less than rogue/investigator, bet more than everyone else), I want a lot of things I am not going to get. What I never wanted was a restrictive like of school spells with a theme. At this point I just want the magical schools back with the freedom to take anything from a big list. At least I can still have that in my home games, and the next time a level 7-10 or 9-12 PFS scenario is being run.
And to be clear: curses providing both benefits and drawbacks made each stage of those curses really messy and difficult for many players to parse. I can fully understand why Paizo wanted to rework that and make curses purely detrimental as their name would suggest. However, I also think the designers gave us the solution to that problem when they baked curse scaling into cursebound feats: by making those feats scale based on how cursed you are, you get to draw benefits from your curse in a manner that is not only much easier to understand, but also easier to mold onto the mechanics of each feat. I never understood why people didn't like a class from the Advanced Players Guide was more complex. This was kind of the point. Swash was also more difficult to play for needing to juggle your Panache, Finisher, and applicable skill. It was nice this wasn't removed just made easier with Bravado. Why did Oracle have to have its complexity neutered? I never thought these were classes for first time players. I didn't try Oracle till I had some game experience under my belt. And I loved it. It wasn't stronger for being complex, but it was different and gave me a lot to think about when I wanted that as a player. I would have loved some extra attention to the Legacy Oracle in the remaster so the weaknesses were addressed and brought into parity with the stronger parts. Teridax, your ideas in the next paragraph are great. I would have been happy with the curses benefit being put on steroids is the curse negatives were as debilitating like Ancestry. If they wanted to add more spell slots, thats nice too.
Having binged all of this just now my favorite suggestion has been to take the Amp and focus point away from Psychic Dedication. Pick one of the Psi Cantrips, this alone is pretty powerful but we can't fix everything. If we could we would fix all the other archs so they would be less generic, but thats a lot of houseruling and not something we should expect from Paizo. So we have to hope they will tone down what is to strong, though without making it generic. I don't think anyone wants it to be generic just for equality with the other deds we just need some kind of equity with the others so they are "budgeted" the same on power. Trading two cantrips for one psi cantrip might not be perfect but it works imo. Never give Amp, thats to much of the Psychic identity, and has been the cause of a lot of frustration related to easy power. Fixing magus is a different topic. Yes removing Amped IW will just encourage different focus spell hunting, but at least for this thread thats not the concern.
It was made available via charity boons at cons. I guess that is okay then, but in my friends and I's defense not everyone would know that. I'll pass that along.
A few people I've talked to and I think that Seneschal Witch is perfectly fine for Pathfinder Society play and should be allowed as an option even if it has to be with a boon, in the next errata. The only ability we imagine to be problematic is Patron Glamor and if that's going to be a problem it'd be okay to ban that. Relationships with PC's patrons in society games don't come up at all in play anyways. All witches might as well have absentee patrons for all the story of the scenarios care. There is no reason to ban it so lets not ban it.
I too would like to hope that in the future we didn't just overcomplicate technology to get the same effect. That we aren't still living in the medieval era of environmental protections, but now it is flashy. Likewise in our over the top scifi fantasy I hope I am not dealing with the old school poison gas again. There is a reason this is science fiction. Use that, play to the setting.If you want a space walk to be dangerous, add a threat. Sudden meteor shower, an eldritch entity from the space between stars which has clung to the ship. If you want a survivalist game make the environments stupid extreme. Your survival campaign is on the sun with technology pushed beyond the warranty so that its listed duration cannot be relied on. Also as someone else said it doesn't seem like you should be able to eat in a lethal environment. So at its most basic level, they will eventually starve to death if they get lost and don't take the terrain seriously. Use that.
I just like this as a thought exercise and a little socializing. Whatever Paizo decides for Impossible is fine, even if it isn't what I am advocating here. I don't mind I am disagreed with here because I am enjoying reading thoughtful posts and considering counter arguments. I don't even expect to change minds. I am just having fun.
I repeat my point. Animated the dead bones and flesh of others to use against other monsters. I don't mean constructs. I do mean mindless undead. It is a tool like any other when you look at it as a tool. An archer who doesn't practice care can misaim and hit an ally. A fighter loses grip of their weapon and if stabs an innocent. A wizard doesn't consider their fireball is to close to a thatched roof and it starts a massive fire in a village.
Sorry but I still don't agree. There will be more classes in the future, but there are 8 for the forseeable future and we only need to make tables for those 8 if there is actually something to say. So far, and maybe you or someone else will point to a SF1e adventure that proves me wrong, but I don't see any adventures which these 8 classes we have will be inappropriate the way a legacy Alchemist would be in FotRP which was called out in its own Player Guide. Which class in Guilt of the Grave World needed a "this class is not recommended" or even "appropriate"? To me, they were all Recommended. So far they aren't doing anything niche enough to be inappropriate for any adventures except maybe a low combat high social intrigue adventure which probably only Envoy is Recommended, Mystic and Warper are Appropriate, and the rest are Not Recommended. You mention dwarf and orc. Those aren't classes, I am talking about classes. I don't expect Paizo is going to jump to suddenly recommending Fighter for their new game. Yes it is cross compatible... like 100% compatible, but the point is this is a new game not a PF2e expansion. They will want to maintain the identity of the game. SF1e had dwarves and orcs. Yes its a fail on their part to already be referencing something from the other game, but at least these are things we would have seen in SF1e. Fighter and inventor are not. That feels like a small difference when the games are cross compatible, but it isn't a small distinction for maintaining the flavor of the setting. Since the options are cross compatible guidance is given to GMs to incorporate them. Thats natural, but I wouldn't expect the other game's class options to become recommended choices for this game.
Great post, immensely illuminating.
You treat light armor very poorly in a way that I worry you misunderstand the difference between Light and Medium. Medium armor will not give more AC. Medium and Light armor both max at +5 AC, they just do it with different Dex Caps and item bonuses, but they also have different strength necessities. If you give FORTRUN users medium armor you are encouraging them to become MAD as now they will need points in STR too to avoid a skill penalty. With how you want Technomancer to be skill versatile I don't think you intended to imply they should also be taking -2 to their STR and DEX skills. What Medium Armor provides that Light Armor doesn't is armor specialization benefits. I don't think adding these fixes the subclass, but if it helps it will be easy enough to allow Armor Spec for Light Armor at level 1 as a class feature. This way they can keep the DEX score they will already have at +3. We might consider having STR penalties reduced by 1 for light armor as well so FORTRUN users can get something that is Dex 3 / Item 2 at level 1 without a skill penalty. But circling back I don't actually think that slightly better armor is the fix. It should really be something dramatic. Maybe refreshing temp HP represented by a "force field". Something which artificially makes the FORTRUN a lot less squishy. Excitingly, maybe later level can have a damage conversion. Take a % of damage as a one time addition to spell damage. Something that encourages taking the risks of being a caster in the front. Seriously though, other than that I think this is a fantastic post and I will definitely be holding it side by side with the final Paizo release. I wish you were writing the new Technomancer because it sounds like you've got the correct idea already established in your head.
The bringing up of Undeath as an allegory for fossil fuels and the eroding of our world reminds me of an old 2017 thread I stumbled on. I am pretty sure I saw some of the names here in that thread so maybe some of you remember the thread that asked "Is using the drift evil". It interests me now what I perceive to be an inconsistency. Word of God (Paizo) and the majority of the community took the side of using Drift is not evil despite it being an allegory for using fossil fuels and the slow destruction of our setting. The big difference is we know how Drift travel destroys the multiverse and that Pharasma is not against Drift travel. We do not know how Undead destroys the multiverse, only that it is confirmed by Word of God (company) and Pharasma is against it. There is an inconsistency in the allegory as we have two fossil fuel allegories but one is treated a lot worse than the other. I am sure there will be very well thought out reasons given how undeath is objectively worse than Drift travel but in the most macro of scales, the lifetime of the setting, the distinction is trivial. Both lead to the destruction of the multiverse. One by the expanding maelstrom, the other by unknown means. I submit that if there can be ethical drift travel there must be a way to ethically raise monsters. While more niche than space travel, the control of monsters to fight other monsters and preserving life is a very real triumph. IRL and I am willing to gamble on Golarion there are more beings that have died than are currently alive. What remains after death is a resource which can be used instead of manpower.
I am not sure I agree that this will be necessary in the near future. We will only have 8 classes for the forseeable future. If Paizo announced more I missed the announcement. As long as the AP sticks to scifi all eight classes have a thematic reason to be there. A whole table for eight classes could be excessive. What I will compromise on going forward is an expanded Class Section of the guide. A short description per class where their abilities fit into an adventure's setting and their mechanical impact in game. Nothing more than what we see in PF2e APs.
Do tell me about drowning though. Not something I've given much thought to outside of the monk suffocation combo. To add to this. I have a player theory crafting a game where they will use Aqueous Orb plus the Investigator's Pointed Question to force drowning.
Here is my one dumb idea of the day SFS and PFS adds free archetype but it can only take the Star/Pathfinder Archetype in it. Add then a special rule that the FA doesn't have the SPECIAL. Maybe then players would all have some minimal skill level which devs can plan for and players can feel connected to the org and each other as members and not feel so much adventures who just walked in off the street.
Also, DMs of home games should be able to know what the rules are. What good is buying a rulebook that gives you unclear rules and says "I dunno, figure it out for yourself?" Which is not an insignificant reason some players swapped to PF2e from dnd5e. That game is so full of holes and minimal options my swap to PF2e is pretty which and complete. Haven't played a game of 5e in 3 years and don't miss it. So it sucks we are getting WOTC level mistakes here.So the release of the newer wizard subclass and schools isn't addressing what people feel the class was lacking? I also consider this to be a Paizo level mistake. Instead of fixing the core problem they try to "patch" the problem with a fix only in subclass. We saw this with Sorcerer options in the dnd5e book Tasha's Cauldron. The new options are objectively better mechanically than the older options. Its a great fix to what Sorcerer was missing, but it wasn't retroactive and thus is just power creep.
There doesn't seem to be any guidance for GMs if a PC wants to accept the bad guy's offer. I get its not a common thing to worry about but the bad guy legitimately asks for people to come peacefully on their terms. Its not as outrageous of other false choices we have seen in TTRPGs, and eventually someone is going to do it if for no other reason than to go against the grain. Leaving the GM to make something up. Going to be a common problem? Not in the slightest. But I would have liked to see a short response for what stops a PC from accepting the offer.
I don't think it is myopic in the slightest to see the energy this and past threads get and see that the community at large does not think this class is A tier. Reverse even, to tell someone to just move on when this is clearly a problem and say "its A tier to me so whatever" (paraphrasing of course) is just covering your ears to problems. We have legit criticism and even better ideas just here. Though they haven't so far "the squeaky wheel gets the grease". As long as we are vocal, insistent, and polite there is a non-zero chance someone will take this into consideration. Maybe it just keeps the ideas alive for new people to find and make into homebrew. I vehemently disagree with moving on. There is nothing wrong with talking. I tried to be insistent but my idea seems not to have impressed anyone so I'll certainly move on from that, but not from my stance that Wizard isn't appealing to play. As anecdotal as it might be I insist that I hardly see wizards played in more than 300 online games through Warhorn. Its not a popular class. Other classes are more engaging to play, are more enjoyable to play, and live their specific fantasy better. That might be anecdotal, but its backed up with what is said here. |
