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Yeah a big difference between the Rogue and the Swashbuckler is not "the swashbuckler does as much damage" but "the swashbuckler is much more tanky and has better support options than the rogue." The weirdness with the saves aside rogues are a bit squishy and don't really offer support beyond "they can debuff."
I have found the best practice for non-human NPCs is first consider "what is the role that this NPC has in the story" whether they are an ally, an enemy, an annoyance, a mystery, etc. That is the most important thing to roleplay, but if you they are a non-human you put that through the lens of "what is the basic premise of these people". Like Dwarves are down to earth but tend to be a little grumpy, Elves are detached, Gnomes are very interested in anything novel, etc. Like if the party needs to convince the town blacksmith to do something for them, and the smith serves as a quest-giver a la "if you do this for me, I'll do that for you" you can play the character very differently. A Dwarf Smith might center how their work is important and they have all these other important jobs that are important to other people, so why should the party skip the line? An elf smith might be more "what's the point, really" as you're wasting their time with trivialities since they're working on making something beautiful that will last. The gnome smith might have a bunch of experiments in metallurgy going on that they really don't want to take time away from.
I'm pretty sure they collect a lot of data regarding class satisfaction like "through surveys at cons, via PFS, etc." so you're probably operating at a level of system mastery that is less than you get among the self-selected superfans on social media and forums. But "the people who have spent the absolute most time thinking about the game" isn't really the demographic you want to design around. Since at a Con you might have some players who have never played your game at all, and do not want to give them so much stuff to learn that they just drop out. So "this class is easy to understand and play" is really important. One could argue that the "classic party" of a fighter, a rogue, a cleric, a wizard should be the 4 most simple classes in the game since those are the basic classes that people who know nothing about your game will attach to. This is probably the opposite of what Wizard Super-fans want, since the class has historically been one that benefited from knowing the ins-and-outs of the rules, but that sort of thing probably fits better on a different class *because* of the "basic four" thing.
So, have we solved anything yet?Still waiting for Paizo to do it. No one seems to have been sacked due to lack of interest. From Paizo's perspective there's probably little impetus to do it because for all the hemming and hawing you'd get on the forum, social media, etc. their actual data from players regarding class popularity and satisfaction has the Wizard in a pretty good place. Now in PF1 there was a similar issue with the rogue where the rogue was popular and people liked it even it was weak just because "they liked the fantasy of being a rogue" so this might be something like that.
It almost feels that it's so easy to gain Panache now that the Swashbuckler needs an additional thing they can spend it on, since you could easily gain it twice on your own turn and once between turns but you can only spend it once per turn.
Uncommon is not supposed to be an especially high hurdle to clear. As long as you have some strong case for having access to an uncommon option (including "they are listed in my ancestry's weapon familiarity list" IMO) then you should have access to it. This still effectively gates people from taking all uncommon options under the sun, since you're not going to be every ancestry or from every place, but you should absolutely let PCs get access to all of the stuff that's related to their people or their homeland.
The ancestry tag on a weapon basically serves to say "these are the weapons of this people" if you're one of those people, you should have access to them regardless of whether or not you take the familiarity feat. Like if you're an Elf Fighter who wants to use the Branch-Spear for a finesse reach weapon, you don't need the familiarity feat since that feat is redundant with your class features. You can buy it because you're an Elf, you grew up with Elves, and a large portion of the people you know are also Elves.
Is John Hight a good thing or a bad thing?At this point, I am not sure that it matters. Yeah, shared history aside, at this point with the game more or less fully remastered "What's going on with D&D" has about as much to do with us Pathfinder folks as "what's going on with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay" - in that all of the above are games with elves in which you roll dice. They can do their thing over there, and we can do our thing over here and they don't have much to do with each other.
For some additional context, WOTC (and, specifically, the MTG and D&D franchises) accounts for the bulk of Hasbro's profits and there seems to be consistent pressure from Hasbro corporate for WOTC to monetize, monetize, monetize. Hence, it's very understandable to worry that tolerating changes to the OGL would lead to more aggressive changes designed to keep growing that revenue stream w/ ever-increasing licensing fees etc. Yeah, it's likely this whole thing started because some executive who doesn't know anything about any particular industry, looked around and thought "Dungeons & Dragons is popular, and it's well-known, but it's not very profitable- let's change that" which got the ball rolling here. Whatever that would eventually look like, if successful, it likely didn't have a lot in common with the traditional model of "you buy books from your FLGS and play with your friends."
The suits at Hasbro that decided "we should alter the OGL so it benefits us more" really didn't have Paizo in their sights. If you read the proposed alteration, the point was really more "Critical Role is making *how* much money and not getting any of it?" It's just that "Hasbro's lawyers apparently believe they can alter the OGL despite the language in the license including 'permanent' and 'irrevocable' and similar words" was news to Paizo (and a bunch of other gaming companies) which lead to the creation of the ORC as an OGL alternative. Note that it is not implausible that Paizo et al would have succeeded in a legal challenge that OGL 1.1 can't actually be revoked, but it would have involved paying lawyers instead of authors and artists.
A basic problem now with the monk archetype was that a lot of the reasons to take it was "you can get a d8 agile, finesse stance with a level 1 monk feat, and eventually you can grab FoB". But Martial Artist still lets your rogue take Stumbling Stance, and has easier unlock requirements. I figure the main reason to MC monk now is for qi spells or grappling stuff.
There is the standard (but slightly late) full refocus feat, and the curse is suspended while you’re in the process of refocusing. Note that it's "when you start refocusing" that you stop being on fire, so if your GM is being deliberately antagonistic by starting the next combat exactly 59 rounds after the last one so as to bait people into resting but not letting them actually refocus, you're still okay. You'll just start on fire as soon as the next combat starts. PF2 largely assumes that you're going to spend the time to heal up and regain resources between combats, so the oracle is fine here since the alternative is "the next combat starts immediately after the last one." Of course the Flames Oracle probably should be patched for the case where the party is on a ticking clock and they're rushing from room to room so you're not burning the whole time, but I figure a GM can do that. I have no intention of tracking players being on fire during exploration mode.
I've seen the level 10 cursebound feat, so I would recommend charhide. It won't protect you from your curse but it will protect you from the rain of fire. Plus enough other things do fire damage that it's a good resistance to have even though it doesn't protect you from the times you set yourself on fire.
I think errata to add the line "fire resistance or immunity cannot reduce this persistent damage" from the flames curse would be reasonable, but it's probably not intended that the Flames Oracle isn't someone who can benefit from fire resistance at all, since their 10th level cursebound feat involves taking a bunch of it. Since other mysteries get call out that the suppress your resistance generally, which was previously ambiguous in the legacy oracle. Like when the APG came out there were arguments in the rules forum about whether like a tempest oracle with the stormtossed heritage would "avoid or mitigate the curse" or if it didn't because said character still takes more damage from electric when their curse is active than they would if it's not. Now that much is clear at least. An important thing to remember is that it's not "you're always taking 1-4 points of fire damage/round as a flames oracle" it's that this is the cost of using your cursebound abilities, which effectively serve as a separate focus pool. We know your basic cursebound ability is foretell harm, which you'd only want to use after a high rank damaging spell, and you might not want to use it at all when you'd only be doing 2 extra damage to someone who got hit with your breathe fire. Being more or less conservative on using your cursebound abilities depending on your mystery seems reasonable.
I mean, a battle oracle right now is a 4 slot divine spontaneous caster with a bad focus spell. That's useful, it's just not going to fulfill the fantasy of "full caster who is okay in danger" that the battle oracle classically has. Choosing it for the domains on the granted spells or that dead walk cursebound ability is valid. Paizo can also assume that people are more likely to consider "War of Immortals" as a must-own book (it's got new classes in it) than most books they print, and they've also teased that there's some new fundamental force in reality that's coming with the event and the pitch for "how to make the battle oracle work like it has historically" just tied neatly into that so it got shoved into WoI.
I'm also not sure if you need a full class archetype for the battle oracle. There wasn't that much which were it apart from the other mysteries. It had a niche of still being a full caster in contrast with the war priest. Making it into a martial wave caster or something would still leave the niche unfilled. It doesn't necessarily need to be for the oracle specifically, you could have a class archetype for any divine caster who wants to get deeper into this whole "gods are at war" which would have some effect on divine magic even if you're not related to a specific god. So you could write it for oracles, animists, witches, and sorcerers at the same time.
One thing I think is possible is that there's the intent to make a class archetype that allows for a more martial oracle to appear in a forthcoming book (War of Immortals, say). That way people who want to play a battle oracle that has the medium armor and martial weapons of the legacy version can buy that back, but most oracles are not going to want to play that way so there's no reason to build it into the basic chassis.
Yeah, I think "you gain a flight speed because you are an eagle" is outside of the bounds of "what is appropriate to give a heritage". So there has to be a level 1 feat to enable some kind of flight. I think the way you flavor this for Awakened Animals is that your awakened eagle can absolutely do normal raptor stuff but there is a difference between "swooping down to snatch a mouse in the field to eat" and "participating in combat." Like probably even without take flight the way your awakened eagle character is getting around involves "using their wings to get from one place or another" but you need the fly speed in order to stay airborne and do stuff.
Yeah, healing and gaining temp HP are all 100% valid responses to the flames oracle's curse of "being on fire". It feels like resistance is the odd case here, since the intent of the "can't avoid or mitigate" rule is to make sure your curse always applies when it is applicable. Like the life oracle gets weakness to void, so if you get hit by an Astradaemon's Essence Drain ability you would increase it by the weakness amount; but if you also had resistance to divine or unholy you could apply those resistances, because you're still taking more damage than you would if you weren't cursed. But it seems trivial to reduce the damage you'd get from being on fire to zero with innate resistance (like "be a charhide goblin"), which is probably against the intent of the curse mechanic.
Dorn-Dergar is a d10 reach bludgeoning weapon that is martial for Dwarves with a feat (or humans with unconventional weaponry). So I doubt they'd print a straight up martial version minus Razing.
The reason to address Flurry of Blows in the monk archetype was that it basically allowed other classes to be better at the monk at the monk's basic fighting style, which felt bad. But at the same time some other builds with FoB from the Monk Archetype were fun, and I'm sad about losing them.
I'm not a fan of "curses are purely negative" either. Like this probably makes the class easier to understand, but it was fun when there was a push-pull within the curse. Like Cassandra's curse was not that people would not believe her, it was that she could also actually see the future.
It's just interesting to me that PC1 basically didn't have major nerfs (cantrips lost like 1-2 points of damage), but PC2 has 3 of them all in multiclass archetypes.
I just don't like the random part of it, if it was 1 round, or 2 rounds, or 3 rounds then you could plan a loop around it but 1d4 is a bummer.
I found the playtest experience completely underwhelming. I mean, the Guardian was a class I expected to love since my #1 ask since the original PF2 CRB playtest was "let me play a Champion that isn't tied to deific worship". But expecting to love the Guardian probably set me up for a disappointment because I genuinely did not enjoy playing the class at all. Taunt specifically just doesn't do anything for me, and that seems to be the essential nature of the class. I liked Hampering Sweeps, but apparently that can't exist in the final release. I guess my hope is for a class archetype to let me play a Rivethun Champion, or an Animist Champion, or a Sangpotshi Champion, or a Pantheist Champion instead. But unlike other playtests, this one made me sad.
Monk archetype imposing a 1d4-round cooldown on Flurry of Blows was a pleasant surprise. Less exciting than a minor boost to monks FoB at around 10th level, TBH. It being a 1d4 round cooldown instead of a static length cooldown makes it annoying to plan around, to boot.
Really if we model the Wizard after an academic, your original thesis is just "what gets you into the club where people won't dispute your credentials" and beyond that you just formalize and subsequently publish your results. This is why when comic books (and comic book movies) want to make someone sound really smart by saying "they've got 6 PhDs" it's very funny hardly anybody on earth gets more than 1, since the 1 already lets you submit to journals and not get rejected out of hand and no PhD program would accept someone who already has one since it's a waste of time, effort, and resources. But the problem with making the Wizard super-academic, is that you don't spend a lot of time going to school in this sort of game.
TBH, I really hate spending class feats on "once per day" stuff. When I do it has to be something that's really a force multiplier when I use it (like quickened casting) not something purely reactive.
I think it would be elucidating if Paizo devs talked (in a blog, on a panel, etc.) what specifically were the pain points they were looking to address in the remaster. Since that would help to understand things like "why did this class that I thought was fine got buffs" and "why didn't this other class get more attention". Like color me confused about why the Rogue got "When you roll a success on the saving throw, you get a critical success instead" on all three saves, when I never thought "super great at saving throws" was part of the Rogue's deal.
I was under the impression that when a wizard picked up a scroll in order to copy something into their spellbook, they still had the scroll when they're done. So the thing about scrolls is if a Wizard thinks Tongues might be useful, they buy a scroll of it, then they copy it into their spellbook, but don't prepare it. If it comes up that Tongues is useful in a given context, they cast it from the scroll and if they think it's going to continue to be useful they prepare it tomorrow.
I always kind of read Mios as being on the autism spectrum, TBH.
I'm sad that there's not an option for "Guardian that isn't based around taunting" in the cards.
If someone decides to make a one rat monk, four turtle fighters party... PLEASE let me know... Clearly it's a Rat Monk, and a Turtle Commander (... leads), Turtle Inventor (... does machines), Turtle Barbarian (... cool but rude), and a Turtle Swashbuckler (a party dude).
This seems like a good use for the various ancestry feats that peg weapon proficiency in specific weapons to the lower tier. Normally martials skip these unless there's an ancestral advanced weapon they want, but there are plenty of decent martial weapons with an ancestry tag. Want to use a breaching pike on an alchemist? Be a hobgoblin.
You can still limit casters with attrition, it just doesn't have to be a one way thing. Like you should be able to buy back "spell slots" or similar by spending other resources, something like a burn mechanic that lowers your max HP or something else you care about (saves, skills, etc.) for the remainder of the day could work.
I mean, there's also things like "the party is on an ocean voyage, they might get attacked by pirates or a sea monster on a given day, but they're not going to get attacked over and over again on a single day" that means sometimes the narrative requires the number of fights/day to not be especially high. There's also an issue where "the party is trying to liberate a captive from a stronghold", where the number of fights is in part going to be affected by the approach the PCs take (and also how successful they are at it.) Like if they do reconnaissance and enter in the right spot, proceed stealthily, and get in and out quickly that's going to result necessarily in fewer fights than "they decide to kick down the front gate and fight every guard." You can never assume the PCs are going to do the thing you thought was sensible and obvious, after all. You also want to acknowledge player choices in deciding their approach whether they want to be sneaky and efficient or noisy and belligerent and those are things that probably should not have the same results.
How am I going to recommend feats for the remaster champion without having Player Core 2 yet?
Wouldnt that be the most powerful use of a focus point in the game by far? It would, currently, yes. But PF3 should have casters structured around having some way of getting spent resources back in case the player made a mistake or situations are desperate or similar.
I think the thing about encounter design misses that the main issue is the psychological hurdle of "If I do this now, I can't do it again today/can only do it again a couple more times" because it forces you to constantly figure out "is this worth it" in ambiguous cases because you don't know what's coming in the fight after this one. Along the lines of the ranger dropping favored enemy/terrain in PF2, it's just good when your game design does not encourage players to try to predict the future. Like if you gave Wizards an option to spend a focus point for an extra use of drain bonded object that would be a huge improvement for sustainability since you can always get your spell back.
From a sustainability perspective I don't see a huge difference in "slots" vs. "mana points", I just think that casters shouldn't start the day at 100% and monotonically count down until they're out of stuff. Addressing the sustainability question is more about "is there a way to replenish your spent resources somehow."
I mean, what Andoran wants is less "conquer Cheliax with trade" and more "hegemony throughout the inner sea via unquestioned naval superiority." Andoran believes that it would be best that Cheliax just rolls over and does things the way Andoran wants them to, no lives need to be lost. Looking at it the other way, your quasi-belligerent neighbor is in business with the honest to goodness actual Devil, would you trust for an instant that they're not up to something, or would you maintain a stronger military than they have in order to keep them from pulling something. Like Andoran is for sure feeling their oats after they effectively ended the international slave trade in the inner sea (most of this was the market in Absalom drying up, after the manumission of slaves in the city and the subsequent abolition of slavery), since "attack slaver ships and liberate their cargo" was one of the big jobs of the Andoran Navy.
Like the presumed reason Cheliax and Andoran aren't going to go to war is "The threat Tar-Baphon poses to all mortal life". Cheliax probably isn't gearing up for that war since they need to lick their wounds a bit after the last decade, but there's also tension in how Cheliax wants to avoid Hell's promised bargain of "let us bring in devils whenever we want, and we'll supply you with troops". The more active Cheliax gets in preparing for war with their neighbor to the East, the more forceful Hell is in bargaining. So whatever preparations are afoot, they're probably low key since "we can field the armies of hell if we need to" is a decent ace in the hole.
I would check page 229 of Player Core 2 for that. Can't get it yet? Well, you can't get Stage Fright either, since it releases on the same day as Player Core 2. We also don't know what the Champion causes of liberation, grandeur, or redemption are or do, so generally I would recommend reading Player Core 2 before finalizing characters for Curtain Call.
Yeah, like a basic problem with the original 8 schools is that almost any magical effect you can think of could be categorized as "transmutation" since via magic you're causing something to be other than what it was. There was a real problem with this in PF1 with the rapid release schedule for Players Companions etc. - they got hugely more Transmutation spells than they did other traditions and had to figure out how to turn some of the Transmutation spells into something else. Talking about "what this is used for" seems like much cleaner theming than "what is the essence for this spell" since the actual essence for magic in Pathfinder are matter, spirit, mind, and life. The Arcane tradition only deals with 2 of these (matter and mind.) Like a good reason to drop the schools was that basically the Wizard was the only class who really used them. It's not really a good idea to have one mechanic that applies to all of the spells in the game that only one class gets value out of it.
I don't really see how the new schools are more "all over the place thematically" than the old schools. Like a school of magic about wards, runes, symbols and language seems thematically cleaner than "Necromancy" and a school of magic about applications to either war or city-building/maintenance seems just as thematically tight as "Transmutation" or "Conjuration."
Notably, a lot of games that used to use mana have gone away from it-- MMO characters frequently still have them, but the actual play is more about managing cooldowns or build-and-spend resources (usually both), which is a more rigid version of spell slots, but they refresh more frequently too. Persona SP is mana, but its characters also burn health for physical attacks.Though ironically a lot of MMOs have done that for the same reason as this thread, addressing the friction between game balance and selective attrition. There's also the issue that in a tabletop game you're relying on human memory to track things like "cooldowns" which has significantly more overhead than "using computer memory." Like the Exalted tick system with the battle wheel would have worked great in a video game, but it was a hurdle to get people over to get them to actually play the game.
Pharasma's always been okay with individuals becoming immortal, when that was their destiny as she used to know what that was. Now that the Omens are lost, she's a little more uncomfortable with the whole idea since she can't tell whether some yahoo seeking immortality being the next Irori or Nethys. So she can't make it *impossible* otherwise she would have prevented several people from becoming deities, but she can make sure it is very difficult, as anybody whose destiny is to become immortal will still find a way.
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