Matrixryu's page

I'm definitely looking forward to this book so that kitsune become available again! Plus, PF1 kitsune had a huge problem with needing to spend a bunch of feats to get all of the flavor of their species, and I think that things will work much better with the way PF2 handles their feats.

I'm hoping that there will be versatile heritages for half-dragons and half-kitsune. Half-dragons exist in the setting, so it would only make sense for a half-dragon heritage to exist. Also, since Kitsune are shapeshifters... it kind of makes sense that half kitsune would exist. Especially since there are half-kitsune in Japanese legends ;)

I have had these same issues on multiple browsers on my desktop. This has been going on for over a week. I had to use my phone to get to the forums to post this!

Seriously, Paizo must be losing a huge number of customers if this is a widespread issue.

I'm not a fan of archetypes that replace feats. They're basically just feats by another name. The thing that made archetypes great was that you could use them to replace abilities that weren't relevant to the character you wanted to create.

I like what I see for the Paladin class so far! I'm also very happy that the paladin code has been given an order of precedence, with 'good' on top and 'laws of mortals' on the bottom. I've always believed that a religious lawful good type would care far more about his god's laws than the laws of whatever city he happens to be in, though he generally would be trying to follow good local laws anyway.

I like the focus on defense and the useage of spell-points rather than weak spellcasting. The only thing I'm not a fan of is having to use a reaction for Divine Grace.

I'm neutral on the subject of 'paladins of other alignments'. I can see a desire for Lawful Evil antipaladin types, but I don't even understand how neutral or chaotic paladins are even supposed to work. Paladins are all about following their gods laws to the absolute, but that theme gets weird with chaotic types.

There was a part of me that was hoping that the new Pathfinder spell system would be like Spheres of Power, but I knew that this was never going to happen, lol.

I have great memories of abusing the Kitsune Sorcerer FCB to get a +5 bonus to the DCs of my enchantment spells. However, I have to admit that it and a bunch of other FCBs were not well balanced. If FCBs stay in the game, they *need* to be more balanced than the PF1 bonuses were.

The thing I like the most about this version of the alchemist is that the items he's creating are basically the same as the ones that anyone else can make, just better/faster. The way PF1 alchemists were randomly magical while 'normal' alchemists weren't bothered me a lot, lol.

The one thing I don't like is how long it takes to get Mutagen and Feral Mutagen. I made a melee focused beastmorph alchemist for PFS, and he was one of my favorite characters even at level 1 and 2. Now it seems like I would have to wait until level 5 to even get mutagen, and level 8 for claws?

Hopefully an archetype will be available to work around that, maybe something that trades out enhanced bombs for earlier mutagens and such.

An interesting tidbit:

Another GM in my gaming group has been looking forward to Pathfinder 2.0 since he wants more balanced and streamlined rules. However, once I told him that goblins were going to be a core race his immediate reaction was essentially this: "Darn it, now it will be much harder to keep our problem player from playing a goblin and making our games into jokes. I guess we won't be doing Pathfinder 2.0."

The sad thing is I kind of found myself agreeing with him. This 'problem player' is a friend, but we have to work hard to keep him from derailing our games. If he gets his hands on a goblin character it is going to be terrible. I guess I now have a better understanding of why so many people here are dead-set against core rulebook goblins. It is basically the Chaotic Neutral alignment all over again.

I'm not a fan of playable Pathfinder goblins, but you all are taking this a bit too seriously. Out of all the changes in PF2, this is pretty much the least important one. A race can be banned if your GM doesn't like it, but dealing with issues with the core game mechanics is a much bigger deal. Can we please just focus our energy on the game mechanics instead?

(That said, I would have much rather have had a Kitsune core race ;) )

These discussions about human fighters suplexing dragons while totally not being superhuman has me thinking that these characters are secretly demigods. They are just trying to act like they are mortals but are failing spectacularly. "Look at me, I'm this normal human being that fell into a pit of lava and survived. That's a totally normal thing!"

Hmmm, limiting this to the base classes makes things a bit difficult for me, but here goes:

Ninja (Rogue): I am counting this as a very big archetype. I find the theme of ninja characters to be much more interesting than rogues.

Beastmorph (Alchemist): I had a lot of fun playing one of these. I'm a huge fan of animal shapeshifter themed characters.

Mooncursed (Barbarian): I have never gotten to play one since I often get stuck playing casters, but I have really wanted to try this archetype out.

Scaled-Fist (Monk): I love the idea of this archetype, because I love dragons and the idea of a monk powered by draconic energy rather than normal ki is amazing.

Qinggong (Monk): Another monk archetype, but I viewed this as almost required for making monks with interesting powers.

Non-core:
Synthesist (Summoner): Yes it had balance issues, but I *loved* this archetype just for the sheer flavor of it. I used this to make a character based on Naruto's nine tailed fox 'aura'.

On one hand, I like that it looks like the numbers in this version of Pathfinder look more balanced. On the other hand, if this turns into a game of "You have about of 50% chance of accomplishing anything" it is going to get really boring really quickly. Someone who is "legendary" at a skill should be more than 5 points better than someone who is untrained but happens to be the same level.

Matrix Dragon wrote:

Bloodrealm wrote:

Matrix Dragon wrote:

Rather than bounded accuracy, I would love it if Paizo simply gave all characters the same BAB. Just give the frontline fighters some additional bonuses on top of that to show their martial prowess.

If every class had roughly the same bab, we wouldn't have the issue of some classes like rogues being completely unable to hit things in high level games. Having a 10-15 point accuracy difference between rogues and other melee classes (like the fighter and ranger) is just silly. We also would actually be able to use those fancy wizard and arcanist archetypes which give them melee weapons.

Well, they're doing half of what you want. Everyone has the same attack bonus scaling. And the same save scaling. And the same skill scaling. Everything increases automatically with character level.

Yay!

No, not yay.

Why would this be a bad thing? One of the biggest problems with Pathfinder is that the scaling got out of whack at high levels. If you were a level 20 character (who isn't a paladin) and your bad save gets targeted with the right spell from an appropriate leveled enemy you are probably going to instantly die. Giving everyone the same scaling and making the differences stat based was pretty much the only solution.

Admittedly, I am a bit more iffy about skills auto scaling.

Matrix Dragon wrote:

Rather than bounded accuracy, I would love it if Paizo simply gave all characters the same BAB. Just give the frontline fighters some additional bonuses on top of that to show their martial prowess.

If every class had roughly the same bab, we wouldn't have the issue of some classes like rogues being completely unable to hit things in high level games. Having a 10-15 point accuracy difference between rogues and other melee classes (like the fighter and ranger) is just silly. We also would actually be able to use those fancy wizard and arcanist archetypes which give them melee weapons.

Well, they're doing half of what you want. Everyone has the same attack bonus scaling. And the same save scaling. And the same skill scaling. Everything increases automatically with character level.

Yay!

Derry L. Zimeye wrote:

Can someone explain what they think they meant with the revisiting Ancestry comment? I'm a little confused by that one!

I haven't listened to the interview itself (and won't, because length), but the bullet points linked earlier almost make it look like a separate advancement track. Almost a second "racial class" type of thing in addition to the "real" class.

I am all for auto-progression of racial abilities. Currently a lot of the most flavorful stuff for Kitsune and Aasimar are hidden behind racial feats that you have to give up actual combat ability to get.

Love this:

** spoiler omitted **

While I would love to just toss alignment out of my game, a majority of my players like it. If there's a way to keep it without me also having to worry what the paladin will see when she detects evil, that's a huge improvement from my perspective.

Also, this addresses one of the concerns I had early on:

** spoiler omitted **

This alleviates some of my main concerns about PF2E, excellent.

I'll keep my list short....

Please do:
Keep the Alignment system. I'm fine with some classes becoming less restrictive, but the idea of absolute alignments is important. I (and a lot of other people) use rpg gaming to roleplay a hero. A lot of people don't want worries about moral greys pulling them out of the fantasy world they're trying to have fun in.

Also: Please keep it so that monsters and npcs work the same way as players. It is important for immersion that players be able to feel like they're fighting enemies who follow the same rules that they do. I love how in the 3.5/Pathfinder system it feels like monsters often simply have stronger starting races than the players.

Matrix Dragon wrote:

I think the problem is that when you don't word something kindly, you are implying that you don't have any respect for the person you are talking to. That's the key difference between well worded constrictive criticism and simply going out and calling someone's work trash and giving them a list of fixes. If Paizo ends up thinking that you don't respect them, then it becomes less likely they'll pay attention to you during the playtest.

You are conflating talking to a person unkindly and talking about an idea/work unkindly.

If people unkindly talking about an idea you had, makes you feel like they don't respect you, then I think that is a line of thinking to avoid.

There is a very big difference between constructive and tearing down someone's work, trust me. I know this since I used to dabble in art and story writing. Constructive criticism shows you how you can improve your work and makes you *want* to improve your work. Blunt or flat out unkind criticism makes people defensive unless they're trying *very hard* to block out their emotions on the subject.

Edit: Sure, paizo is made up of professionals and they should be trying to hold back their emotions when reading the playtest forms, but honestly they're human beings and that sort of thing can be very draining for anyone. If we all managed to give Paizo only constructive criticism instead of our usual angry criticism we would end up getting a much better product in the long run since they'd have more energy for working on it.

Sara Marie wrote:

...calling their work trash is okay, take a moment to reflect on why that is and if you want to promote that as socially acceptable. I don't believe that an atmosphere where that is tacitly approved of is healthy for our forums and it is certainly unhealthy for the community.

If someone dislikes something enough that it doesn't have value to them, then no matter how politely they phrase that sentiment, they are calling that work trash to them.

I understand protecting people, but shielding work/ideas from insults sounds dangerously close to censorship of criticisms. Which seems to me something to be very careful about to have an effective playtest.

Now if you meant that as "the association of a particular person to shoddy work is toxic" then I completely understand and retract my concern.

I think the problem is that when you don't word something kindly, you are implying that you don't have any respect for the person you are talking to. That's the key difference between well worded constrictive criticism and simply going out and calling someone's work trash and giving them a list of fixes. If Paizo ends up thinking that you don't respect them, then it becomes less likely they'll pay attention to you during the playtest.

People that hate the new edition will see problems that Paizo can't, and they have no obligation to be kind.

This is why we can't have nice things..... (in other words: I completely disagree)

Monsters and NPCs using completely different rules.

This so much. They way monsters and npcs use the same rules as the players in Pathfinder is one of the biggest strengths of the system. It is very important that players feel like their enemies are the same as they are rather than being a bundle of stats that don't follow the same rules that they do.

In pathfinder, monsters effectively just have a stronger starting race than the players. They can even take class levels. Turning monsters into meaningless stat blocks would mean we lose all of this.

That being said, I am not opposed to monster and npc creation being simplified in some way as long they're still generally interchangeable with players.

@Endzeitgeist
Thanks for the detailed answer! Yea, the more I've read the book the more comfortable I've been getting with using it in a mixed race campaign. I'll just have to take each game slowly and make sure that the party balance seems right.

I'm not sure that the idea of "dragons aging via worshipers" works with my campaign, but I may take a look at those rules anyway.

Matrix Dragon wrote:

. . . is so intuitive and obvious . . .

First, when people say this in a debate, it comes across as "you're stupid if you don't agree."

Intuitive and obvious: you fall prone when knocked unconscious, you can't take actions when dead

Desirable: your eidolon keeps its gear when dismissed so that I don't need to lug it around and can tank STR and don't have to re-equip it when I re-summon it.

Desirable != Intuitive and obvious

You cut off the part where I added "In My Opinion" immediately after saying that...

So, you could say that you violated a rule of debating by misquoting me there, so we are both at fault now ;)

I will say this: In Non-PFS games if you have a GM who requires that your eidolon be re-equipped after each summon, then the solution is to equip it with (harmless) cursed items. The items should automatically return to the eidolon as soon as it is resummoned :)

Trog Player: Ah... Hay, dude, did anyone pass by here in the last hour?

Judge: roll a Diplomacy check.

Trog Player: Ah... roll of 6, -2 is a 4.

Judge: roll initiative.

This is where I feel a need to point out that most people don't even understand how diplomacy checks work. If people were more aware of the rules, then people with low diplomacy skills would not be afraid to roleplay.

There are two actions you can make with diplomacy: improve someone's attitude, and make a request. Diplomacy checks based on making requests, by the rules, *do not cause an NPC's attitude to become worse*. It is the "Improve Attitude" action that has penalties for failure.

Plus, once an NPC has a 'Helpful' attitude they will generally accept basic requests without rolls even being needed.

I think the problem is that you're restricting your imagination of how Evasion works. He could be doing things other than jumping out of the way of the attack. There are all sorts of ways that evasion could explain how a character evaded something.

Falling Roof example: The rogue ducked under a table or a counter. He could even have used the party's fighter for cover.

Electrified Water Example: The ring is allowing the character to have magically enhanced reflexes. He briefly jumps out of the water as the lighting strikes, or stabs his sword into the water in such a way that the electricity is drawn away from him (like the force lighting in Star Wars Episode 3).

Spider Climb: There is no reason why a character using spider climb couldn't choose to jump. Even if he didn't, he could have just flattened himself down and let the fire flow over him instead of being hit by it.

Matrix Dragon wrote:

Ick, so starfinder uses the "npcs are different from players" shortcut? That's a turn off for me both as a player and a gm, though I can understand why people would be alright with it. For me, it is really immersion breaking.

You gotta admit that coming to the realization that you can't be anything you want to be is probably the most immersive thing about this game. Sometimes the cards are against you. Do the players rise against the problem or do they say, "Man this ain't fair! How is that Solarian shooting a ranged energy blast at my EAC!? When do I get to unlock that? ...What??? Only he gets that? Alright man I quit. Take over the planet and keep this ship. I don't care."

Meta-Thinking is the definition of "immersion breaking".

I hope that you're not assuming that *those* are my reasons for wanting characters and NPCs to work the same, lol. I don't really care whether or not the players have access to everything that the NPCs have as long as it is plot or setting related.

For me, it is very important that everything follow the same rules just for the sake of consistency. Telling me that an NPC works differently just because he isn't a player is like telling me that the laws of physics are different for the players. For me, there are few other things that are more immersion breaking.

Ick, so starfinder uses the "npcs are different from players" shortcut? That's a turn off for me both as a player and a gm, though I can understand why people would be alright with it. For me, it is really immersion breaking.

The druid restrictions on armor are more for the flavor of being primitive and separate from civilization than the actual material the armor is made from. You're all making this more complicated than it needs to be, lol.

Dragonborn3 wrote:

Paizo never playtested arcehtypes. It's sad we'll probably see more 'quality' like this now because there are no more playtests. What a cycle its in, eh?

Why doesn't Paizo do playtests anymore? I wholly believe past classes have been great and would have been horrible were it not for the playtests.

Does Paizo intend to purposefully let Pathfinder degrade in quality? Maybe to have some "legitimate" reason to usher in a 2.0?

It's mind boggling to me. Was there some sort of management change?

Unfortunately, playtests only seemed to work well for Paizo when they had a smaller number of fans. Now that there are more people on the forums, the noise from troublemakers is too much for them to deal with during playtests. That's my best guess.

The Shifter class's levels count as Druid levels for the purposes of Wildshape feat prerequisites. However, the Shifter doesn't count as having druid levels for any other purposes.

This makes many wildshape feats useless to the shifter. This includes wildshape feats that would have been used to advance the character's effective 'druid level' for wildhshape when multiclassing.

I'm assuming this was not intended, and it should probably be put on the errata list for the shifter.

Personally, I think if you give yourself some more time off from the setting eventually things will 'calm down' a bit. Eventually you should be able to start thinking about the campaign setting itself without thinking about the stuff that your brother did. It is probably just still too fresh in your mind and you're obsessing about it a bit, lol.

I have to ask, was anyone else really bothered by the design of those ridiculously bad bombers that the resistance used at the start of the movie? I could spend an hour ranting about those things. Starting with: Who would use gravity reliant bombers in SPACE and why would you ever design a bomber that required you to eject your crew into space to drop the bombs?

That's combined with the fact that the things were basically sitting ducks and powder kegs rolled into one.

I love the idea of the Weretouched Shifter and (generally) how it works. I just wish that it had more than two class features to gain after level 5. This lack of class features is essentially the shifter's main issue IMO.

I really wish that there was a feat that gave additional Wild Shape uses per day so we could just use the shifter for multiclassing purposes. That alone would at least make the class worthwhile. Normally stuff like the Shaping Focus feat would work, but since Shifter levels don't count as druid levels it doesn't do anything useful.

Admittedly, taking those immunities away feels like 4e and 5e style "The players are different from everything else" design. I've always felt that one of the best strengths of 3.5 style games was that the players and the monsters followed the same rules.

Rating a 250+ page book on 12 pages of content? Priceless.

{/sarcasm}

Yea, this is why I gave the book 3/5 stars instead of 1 or 2/5

I mentioned the drubbing that the Shifter class got on these boards to my gaming group. The two who had read Ultimate Wilderness were actually surprised by this -- and one of them is notorious for building very mechanically strong characters.

I wonder how much it would imbalance the class if the character chose his available aspects during his morning prep instead of when leveling up?

I think the issue with the shifter has more to do with it being boring to play rather than it not being a strong class. The thing is, in combat it is basically just a pounce machine. We already have plenty of those, and the other pounce classes have other tricks in addition to the pouncing.

Just a thought: it is super high level, but the Arcane Bloodline Bloodrager eventually gets something about as good as (if not better) than druid wildshape at level 16. They can get Beast Shape IV or Form of the Dragon I for free at the start of every rage.

So, I guess there is at least one full BAB class that effectively gets unrestricted wildshape even if it doesn't happen until near the end of a campaign. The funny thing is at that level an Arcane Bloodrager is a better shapeshifter than the Shifter class, though the Shifter has longer durations.

More apropos, I'd point out that page space and word count is a limiting factor the same way coding is.

The Shifter certainly could have had full Wildshape the same as the Druid, but I doubt the PDT wanted another gonzo shapeshifter with the ability to cherry-pick the bestiaries.

Yea, the druid's wildshape is kind of nuts. I totally understand why Paizo didn't want to give that to a full BAB character.

So the Shifter, unless they pick up a weapon (hey there Elemental Shifter), doesn't actually benefit that much from full-BAB except for qualifying for feats (of which they don't have many to spare.)

The Weretouched Shifter can use weapons as well. Though, in my opinion, if you're using weapons as a shifter you probably should just switch classes. Natural attacks are one of those class features that are overvalued, and thus come at the cost of other potential class features.

I reviewed myself not long ago, while trying very hard not to overreact in either direction. I didn't feel that the shifter was terrible, but neither was it especially good. It's... solid for a martial class, not exceptional. Looking back, I realize that I was interpreting what was said at the various panels about it through the lenses of my own expectations, and that set me up for this. Mind, in all honesty I didn't want the shapeshifter everyone else wanted to begin with.

Still, to the devs: I loved the book on the whole. There were a few spots of disappointment, but I have absolutely no regrets about buying the hardcopy and PDF.

Personally, I've never been a big fan of "Master of Many Forms" style characters. I've been a fan of shapeshifters that specialize in one or two forms. So I'm actually on the other end of the spectrum of people who dislike the shifter, lol.

With the lycanthrope archetype, the shifter came *very close* to being my ideal class. It hit all of the right buttons for both theme and being fairly combat effective. Since this was so close to being my ideal class, the fact that it seemed boring to play and hampered by dead levels was kind of upsetting. There's also the issue that I'm going to feel forced to use one of the two forms that grants pounce, since they are by far the most combat effective.

Sure, this class may get upgrades with new archtypes in the future, but those archetypes will never be able to fix the dead levels in the Lycanthrope archetype that I had such high hopes for. It really would take a huge errata or an Unchained Shifter to fix this class for me.

Mmmm... Noob question: can I apply Improved Natural Attack to the shifter's claws?

Hopefully, since at least one of the shifter's animal forms gets Improved Natural Attack as a bonus feat. (unless I am mistaken)

The game Baldur's Gate has been proven that summoned cows will never produce milk ever again

:) :)

Matrix Dragon wrote:

I noticed the new spring attack feats lately, and the possibilities they open up intrigue me. Aside from the obvious ability to make characters more mobile in combat, I'm thinking that these feats could be very useful for characters and creatures with a single natural attack. Characters who wildshape into a wolf form and then use that feat chain to trip two or three different enemies could suddenly be viable.

I don't have the feats in front of me to confirm this though, for all I know they require that you use an attack with itteratives.

It doesn't say you have to attack with iterative attacks. It looks like it'd work, but it'd be an incredibly feat-intensive build... but fun!

Yay! Honestly though, this feat chain might be one of the best things to come out of the book. It might require a lot of feats, but I know a lot of people who want to play 'mobile' melee characters. I finally have something I can point them to other than a few archetypes.

I might be adding the spring attack feat chain on my list of 'automatically upgrading feats' (like vital strike) to make it easier to get.

I noticed the new spring attack feats lately, and the possibilities they open up intrigue me. Aside from the obvious ability to make characters more mobile in combat, I'm thinking that these feats could be very useful for characters and creatures with a single natural attack. Characters who wildshape into a wolf form and then use that feat chain to trip two or three different enemies could suddenly be viable.

I don't have the feats in front of me to confirm this though, for all I know they require that you use an attack with itteratives.

Personally, I think the Shifter class can be good at combat if you go with a pounce form. It is hard to be bad at combat if you have Full Bab and pounce. The class also has good flavor and archetypes.

I think most of the complaints are that the shifter is awfully limited in what it can do. It can grow claws, gain a few animal abilities, shape shift into a few animal forms, track... and that's it. It is competing with the fighter to be the most bare bones feeling class in the game.

There were two basic crowds of people who wanted the shifter. Some people wanted a character who was "the best shapeshifter", who could change into everything and shift forms to gain advantages in mid combat. Other people wanted a shapeshifter who focused on a single alternate form, be the *best* at that alternate form, and have a lot of fun abilities to use in that form. I don't think either crowd was satisfied.... partly because there are other classes that can fill both of those roles much better than the shifter can right now.

Uh, it gets Track, Wild Shape, and Final Aspect on all the levels it gets its AC boost.

I didn't mean to say that they aren't getting something on those levels. I was just pointing out that the Shifter's ability list is so *thin* compared to most other classes that they had to put those defensive bonuses on the main ability column.

It is like Paizo thought that wildshape was such a powerful ability that a full BAB character didn't need anything else. The problem is that there are already several other full BAB classes that have a version of wildshape (beast shape spells) in addition to all the other abilities that their class has.

The way you can tell that something went wrong with the shifter is that they had to fill in its level progression table with reminders that your AC increases by +1 every four levels. If the monk didn't need that, then the only reason the shifter has it is to hide the fact that they aren't getting any new abilities.

Edit: It has been pointed out that the monk *does* have this reminder. It is separated it into its own column on the progression table however.

Wait, there's a lycanthrope archetype?!

Yep, it is limited, but nice and flavorful. The shifter only gains one animal type, but gains DR/silver equal to half his shifter level. At level 4 he can also enter a hybrid form (of his size I believe) which has all of the animal form's abilities and automatically gains his shifter claws if he wants. Yay for werewolves that actually have claws!

The only problem I have with it is that it *still* struggles to be as good as something like the mooncursed barbarian (unless I am mistaken). Though the sheer amount of DR this archetype can get is nice, since most creatures can't bypass DR/silver.