OrochiFuror's page

Just wanted to bring up the fact that animal companions in PF2 are fundamentally broken once you get into specializations. It's easy to have companions that are 2-5 points behind player armor class and hit bonus, with strength based companions always ending up behind in both areas.

This is because specialization gives lop sided stat buffs that you can stack multiple times, with dex based companions getting a proficiency boost to AC as well.

I hope the SF crew take this into consideration and make sure all companions are on par mathematically. Either make the stats the same and choose between proficiency enhancers if you need for them to feel more agile nor more beefy, or just keep them all the same stat wise and give different ability and upgrade options to make them feel different.
They don't need to be on par with players, but at the very least on par for every choice you make and closer then 5 points off for armor class of players because that just makes them crit bait for boss enemies and that feels terrible.

One of the core problems with Guardian is that in practice it's a class that takes damage. Unlike Champions that prevent allies from taking damage. When you compare the amount of HP a Champion can save over a long fight versus how much a Guardian can, the Champion can save a lot more HP as they usually have more then one HP pool to work with.

So with that in mind the Guardian needs to be able to take more damage, but they also need more ways to be an active threat in combat.
What if the core ability (taunt at the moment) also made it so anytime the Guardian loses HP(but not temp HP) from a taunted target they get an equal amount of temp HP.
This would allow them to keep taunt up while locking enemies down or taking hits for allies longer.

As a base class feature you can tie other abilities into it, such as having powerful abilities like sweeping strikes cost or require you have temp HP. This would prevent other classes easily poaching powerful feats and allow Guardians to have several strong feats to build different control or damage styles.

This would give the class more staying power for people who just want to soak up damage for the team, but also give options for being more aggressive when under attack.

I'm wondering if anyone else is finding danger island far too easy? My group started with 5 people going through AV and we lost one fight and nearly died 2 other times. We lost our cleric and I swapped from swashbuckler to a druid for FotRP. For most of these fights, our fighter and paladin could handle them without the rogue and I.

I accept that our fighters build puts him way above the power most are going to have but is that enough to just break these encounters? We went up against both a Dragon and legendary reptile, these were both four or five levels above us and neither lasted 2 whole rounds. First one I cast haste on the rogue, who missed all his attacks, so neither of us did anything for that fight, the second I wild shaped and moved and that's it.

Our GM has started adding in extra enemies but it doesn't really seem to matter, against two 8 enemy groups that were level -1 or -2 I was able to do some nice aoe damage but still the only damage done to the group was against the rogue and I, the fighter and paladin just cut through everything that comes up to them and they mitigate nearly all damage to them.

So I'm wondering if most of these fights are soft ball stuff compared to things like AV and AoA? Or is having martials that can easily keep frightened 2 and flat footed on their targets just force multipliers that trivialize most encounters? Are the other books more difficult or should I let my GM know he's going to have to scale every fight we do up? On that note won't we eventually level faster if we are fighting harder/more opponents and thus run into more trouble?

So far I think I love these bigger fights against larger groups, I don't know how many my GM is adding to these fights, but they are far more enjoyable then anything in AV or the later half of AoA that I played.
I'm interested in others experience with the fights they have run into. We just finished day 2, so there is likely still more interesting things to come.

We now have a few different things that interact with increasing one's size, both temporarily and now permanently.

We have giant barbarian that gets reach increase for clumsy 1.
We have the spell enlarge that gives the same as well as a +2 or +4 damage bonus.
We have beastkin that get enlarge as the spell but permanently for their hybrid form.
We have lizardfolk who get the same but also +level to hp, except it's permanent to their one form.
We will be getting both a temp and permanent size increase with summoner Eidolons that looks like it will just undo a penalty and not give a reach increase until they are huge, they don't get clumsy however. This is also subject to change.

What is everyone's opinion on how these things work for characters? Do you think any of these rules gives the feeling of a large and dangerous threat? Do they fulfill your fantasy of what a larger character would be able to do? Do you think the permanent versions are balanced with the temporary increases? How would you handle the downsides of permanent size increase at your table?

I understand paizo didn't want size differences to be a huge influence do to the issues in previous itterations, but I don't think most of these give the feel of being large or huge on their own, the bonuses really don't fit for all the downsides as a permanent effect.
The barbarian I think is the best, it's temporary and you get more damage and can pick up athletics boost in class. The rest of them feel like they come up short to me. The downsides might be niche or specific situations, but they can be crippling.

My AoA's group has learned to abuse wall of stone, it shuts down most things above medium size rather easily as they will have 4 panels to break before having any chance to get free. You also lose the ability to easily enter most structures and many dungeons will have tight spaces for you. Without some generous GM fiat to let you smash through things or hand wave a LOT of squeezing, your life as a large creature could be terrible.

Most of these being temporary in one way or another make these issues less severe but for lizardfolk and certain summoners who don't like dismissing their companion, these could be game breaking problems. This will become more of an issue as we get more options like this, so what are others thoughts on it?

Just a collection of my play experience and my thoughts about it, things that didn't feel like they fit properly in the survey.
Playing as a Kobold with a dragon eidolon.
Joined an AP game in progress at level 12. Party was supposed to be a champion, a rogue, a cleric and a druid. With all the bases covered for roles I asked to try out the summoner and got the go ahead. However when I joined the game I found out the champion had dropped out.
So felt a bit rough having lost the martial front line.
Out of combat was mediocre, nothing came up that I could do that the rogue couldn't do much better.
The first fight was an ambush, in water. I used evolution surge for swim speed, and tried to get some hits in. My summoner was eaten before I could get away. Out of 3 dragon frenzy attempts, I got 2 hits, for mid 20's damage.
The rogue did some summoning and then moved in to use a monk stance and get some flurry attacks, doing mid 30's to low 40's damage.
The druid used plant form and got a bunch of reach hits for mid 40's damage.
Battle cleric tried to melee and a few spells and did no damage the whole fight I think, did some nice heals though.
My Eidolon got eaten and confused so I cast a level 6 lightning bolt to get some damage in to get free as I could not make the damage quota to get out otherwise. The enemy crit succeeded, but the GM reversed that as he couldn't get on board with shooting lighting from inside something and not getting a hit. So I managed to get free, we kept chipping away at the monsters until I went down, got healed back up, dropped another lightning bolt and finished up the fight.
Overview: I felt that my Eidolons damage was very sub par and had a very low chance to hit, 13 or above to hit. While the enemy was hitting me on a 5 or above. Aside from the crit success, my upcasted lightning bolt felt like alright damage, if I could have hit multiple targets and such.

Out of combat: seemed to be the AP was written in a way to make what the group was doing difficult, coming up with our own solutions and such. So we sorta bungled through things and I didn't feel like I brought anything to the table anyone else didn't, since we all ran into the same problems.
Second fight, boss fight. Started out fighting some minions, wrecked one and the other tried to run away, I tried to make my Eidolon huge to stop them but couldn't get into the right spot in time so just made an attack on them and missed. Let out some lightning breath down the hallway they ran through and got some damage, the rogue tossed a fireball and finished them off. Then the boss came in, they had a hard time getting through the small hallway, and as I was the only one with reliable ranged I got another breath attack in and some ranged evolution attacks before engaging. The whole group suffered some aoe damage, my summoner was in the next room so was fine. We all got blinded, so the battle was very rough from there.
We had an alchemist join us, who was able to hit the enemy weakness and did the majority of damage in this fight. I used share senses to allow my Eidolon to see through my eyes and still keep attacking. My Eidolon and the cleric took the majority of the bosses attacks, getting hit for 40-50 damage per strike, reinforce Eidolon doing a little reduction to the physical +elemental attacks. I was using reinforce plus having my Eidolon cast shield to up my AC and have a bit of DR.
Overview: the breath weapon is alright damage, the recharge can be nice, better then most other similar dragon breath effects. Couldn't hit the enemy at all with Eidolon attacks. Went down in the last round before the boss finally died.

Hit level 13, Eidolon attack went up, Summoner AC became the same as Eidolon, felt real bad.
More skill stuff that didn't really play well for anyone.
Third fight, the cleric and druid engaged some dwarves, who ran away shortly. I had my Eidolon pin them in the room they ran to as they got reinforcements. Hit them all with a breath attack, a few crit fails made the damage feel nice. Still couldn't get a chain of hits to ever make using boost feel good. Melee hits widdled me down while my stone skin nearly ignored ranged attacks. Got off another good breath attack before I went down and the group cleaned up quickly.

Overview: fighting lower level things felt good, getting some hits and damage in, keeping enemies in range for a good breath attack is nice if you can roll low for recharge.

Next fight was mostly the same, against a set of rogues that couldn't get flanking so didn't do much damage, I resisted all the poison attacks and we took them down quick enough.
Moved quickly onto the next fight to preserve stone skin on two characters.
Next fight was 6 rogues, blasted them with breath attack but they have really good saves so only got about 40ish damage total. Druid turned into a green dragon and got a nice breath attack out. Druid took lots of damage, being the largest target in the fight. Luckily none of the enemy got flanking so couldn't get sneak attack. Boss alchemist appeared on round 3 and started doing a bunch of damage to the druid. Our alchemist spent a bunch of time healing the druid.
I got a second breath off and continued to try and take the one target next to my Eidolon. I spent a whole turn summoning a young bronze dragon, covering a door way so the enemy couldn't escape. Got three hits with a dragon frenzy with no boost, so then I started using boost and couldn't get more then 1 hit for the rest of the fight. My summon did a great job tanking, the GM was even amazed that these rogues that were 2 levels higher then the dragon could not hit it. Our rogue used his cloak of elven kind to keep invisible and take down the boss with a few regular hits and two crits for over 60 damage each. I did a third breath, all the rogues crit saved, the young dragon was immune and so I only did damage to our invisible rogue. We finished the fight and called it a night.

Overview: again fighting lower level things felt nice, I could get some hits and with a luck streak got 3 hits in one round. Summoning was alright, think I just got lucky, I think had I done it in the other boss fight it wouldn't have worked so well. My young dragon lost half their health in 3 rounds against 2 enemies two levels higher then it was.

Overall experience: damage felt very sub par compared to druid or rogue, the breath weapon felt nice when I could get two in one fight. Skill capabilities were vastly over shadowed by the rogue. I had the second highest health in the group after the dwarven cleric, so took a large portion of the damage in most fights. Not a lot of options for tactics.
Not sure what the intended role within a group the Summoner is supposed to fill, having lower to hit and damage than any martial, having fewer skills and skill feats compared to even a swashbuckler, medium AC with high caster health, very few spell slots for utility. With the feat options now it doesn't seem like you can really focus on filling a role within your group, it's just a bunch of interesting pieces that I don't see coming together to make a whole.

Hopefully this is just the bare bones of the class and there's a lot of things that have already internally been confirmed to work well so didn't need testing, but it feels like the class is full of flavor but the mechanics are lacking. Being 1 point behind in to hit and 1-3 points behind defense just feels bad. Summoning in general feels bad having creatures so far below your level, making them mostly useless as front line combatants, I understand the idea behind limiting them due to just using one slot and having the potential to waste a bunch of enemy actions and such, but as creatures you want to be effective they don't feel like they fit the bill. I didn't find a single moment where the shared HP was a problem, even when both summoner and Eidolon were being targets, I feel it allows your Eidolon to survive longer by allowing it to have a much higher HP pool then it would otherwise be allowed, and any changes would leave you with having no Eidolon by the end of many fights, never mind how splitting HP would likely leave your Summoner having very low HP.
Compared to the two powerhouse characters of wildshape druid and Rogue with spellcasting and monk dedications, my summoner couldn't really contribute much other then being a punching bag and some mild AOE damage. So I think the class is missing a lot of power, especially at higher levels, as well as diversity. Hopefully there will be either more robust Eidolon selection options, sub class options, or feats that really let you focus on actively filling a role in your group.