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I've run this extensively on Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Two rapiers works better than using a light weapon in one hand, because you can use the same set of feats to boost both weapons. Instead of trying to alleviate the base penalties, you can just layer on Weapon Focus, Improved Critical, etc. and reap the rewards with modest feat investment.
This is the Theme Music Bard problem all over again.
I think it's actually more challenging from a world-building perspective that Golarion governments actually know right away when a ruler or heir is dead. Historically, that news had to travel by boat. As far as raise dead, there is no reason to assume it works reliably for NPCs. Resurrection is much more powerful, a 7th level spell that costs 10,000 per go. And some little prince or princess with Con 10 can only be resurrected maybe a half dozen times before they can't be resurrected anymore at all. A world in which resurrection is a regular expectation is also one in which disintegration is used to tidy up regime changes. Or just burn their body in a pyre and let the ashes scatter.
Player Core 2, the Mauler has old style prerequisites, I'm guessing Strength 14 should be Strength +2, matching similar archetypes.
I don't think replicating existing spells is necessarily the first goal. I anticipate gaining a few of those Divine and Arcane spells through class options and Feats. For the rest, I expect similar options to appear as Focus spell. In other words, very similar structurally to Clerics.
I think most witches are a lot like endurance wizards. They have a wide variety of effects they can bring to bear, and can sustain many of them. If their familiar bites it, they become more dependent on prepared slots, so turn into junior varsity wizards until they can do their daily preparations. Depending on your patron choice, you may or may not have solid damage dealing spells, but there are feat options that grant weapons or more focus spell options. You can definitely play as a debuffer who then moves in with a cursed dagger or metal teeth or whatever. You are somewhat fragile but you have pretty good attack denial abilities, so I think it's still a solid approach that might occasionally buckle against mobile opponents.
Mauler Dedication has Prerequisites Strength 14 Should be Strength +2 in the remastered books.
To me, it sounds like there was a mismatch between player expectations and results. The player expected once they grappled the enemy caster, they would have them in a completely effective submission hold. But that's not what grapple represents in Pathfinder. It represents varying stages of engagement, only defeating the opponent when you get a pin or deplete their hit points. In fact, I would say it's not very realistic to walk up to a dangerous opponent and render them essentially helpless in six seconds by aggressively grappling them. If you visualize the scene, the enemy caster is obviously moving around and trying to avoid being grappled.
Dance battle! Me and you.
I don't think enthrall is intended primarily for combat or for influence. It's intended for exploration scenes where you want want character to tie up a bunch of eyes and ears, while other characters do something they don't want observed or interfered with.
Unless something forbids focus spells, or specifies a spell level that would make a focus spell ineligible, a focus spell is a spell.
I'm pretty sure one instance of a spell strictly applies, and the reason the limit is important in this case is because the spell is only intended to grant one energy resistance.
"No Department of Defense ever won a war." - Robert A. Heinlein The Guardian needs to offer something more than being sticky, tough, and "taunting." It should have legitimate protection and control abilities, and be a threat in its own right.
I vote in favor of lockdown/difficult terrain moves. Motion to have Taunt turned into a Feat, and published in an obscure sourcebook to mollify people think that needs to be a thing.
Taunt, as written, isn't really taunt. It's a broken wing gambit. You lower your defenses to invite an attack. It's hard to make that the conceptual center of the guardian's control mechanic. Being weak and vulnerable is not their thing. Okay, but bottom line, to make it work, the guardian gives up their area of strength (defense) to invite an attack. It doesn't work. It would be better if the guardian could just pick someone to punish, and do extra damage against that mark. Then the mark would have a legitimate reason to want to neutralize them.
If you're a low mobility, low offense character, they can probably just save you for last most of the time.
Taunt, as written, isn't really taunt. It's a broken wing gambit. You lower your defenses to invite an attack. It's hard to make that the conceptual center of the guardian's control mechanic. Being weak and vulnerable is not their thing.
Warfare Lore already applies to initiative at 3rd level.
This is okay, but I think maybe the answer is to get rid of the concept that the Guardian needs to Taunt.
That's fine. I was just going to add that, for me, there is a high bar for Taunt-like mechanics. It's hard to figure out something that will make someone target an opponent when they shouldn't, doesn't soften the guardian's defenses, and isn't mind control. So the position I have come to at this moment is that Taunt probably just needs to go. The Guardian needs to be re-envisioned as a front line support/combatant hybdrid that does not need a Taunt mechanic. Enemies should target them because it makes sense.
I guess the question is: is Int as important to the Commander as Wis is to the Cleric?
The whole concept of "tanking" relies on enemies attacking you when they shouldn't.
Then give them a pool of points they can dole out to affect allies. Let that be the limit.
Positioning, giving cover, Taunting, and Intercepting the Strike if they still ignore you. Why would they attack you just because you Taunt them?
When the wizard in the fancy bathrobe fireballs them.
Squadmates should just be anyone who is present when you make your "daily preparations," or who can be caught up to speed later.
But if you're supposed to be drawing enemy attacks, why would they target you when you're so tough, but also not outputting a lot of damage? Why wouldn't they save you for last?
I would bundle it with a defensive action like raising a shield for extra action compression. The guardian gets Shield Block, so there's a useful option. Hey, so what about just getting rid of taunt?
Perhaps they should rename the class to the Suggester.
What if the Guardian had a Feat that allowed them to burn an action to gain an extra reaction?
I don't see why they don't get improved defenses with unarmored and light armor. Logically, I just don't see them lacking that ability. Presumably they just WON'T use those options, mostly, because several of their abilities key off medium and heavy armors. Then again, what if want to play a big, burly bare-chested guy who provokes the enemy and uses a big two-handed hammer? Why is that not an option?
I think the ideal replacement for Taunt would be an ability that encourages enemies from attacking you, or discourages them from attacking other people, that doesn't worsen your AC and that doesn't act as "aggro" or mind control. Reactions, controlling terrain, demoralizing, auras that make you a good strategic target, these are things I would prefer.
I think an improved reactive strike would be better than a taunt, for this reason.
I think one test of distinctiveness is this: if a Champion or Fighter took a multiclass devotion into Guardian, what would the result look like? If a Guardian Fighter looks too much like just a Guardian, or just a fighter, it makes me question a lot.
A one-handed falchion is, in game terms, a scimitar. It's a crit-heavy slashing sword.
This might well be the first True20 commercial release in a decade.
Good news! It's done, and hopefully will be appearing for sale here pretty soon. 248 pages. I accidentally over two dozen playable races.
I think Swap has more to do with the idea of combat being dynamic. IRL, if you want to swap out an item, you do it while continuing to fight. I've done some boffer LARP combat, and in large battles, I often went out armed with more weapons and shields than I could use at a time.
No, because you can't carry and own a ray.
Some spells don't even have somatic components, and there are ways to reduce the ASF penalty.
The 3e Warmage has a fireburst spell that damages adjacent targets.
You can certainly tailor a talented rogue for this concept, but it doesn't have exceptional support throwing things a lot.
In general, diversity almost always helps with these issues. If there are dark-skinned elves that are not Drow, and drow that are not dark-skinned, and drow that aren't evil, and evil elves that aren't drow, then "Drow" doesn't have to do as much work. When one representation of a race or ancestry has to do all the work, the result is almost always reductive. And in matters of race and ethnicity, reductivity draws from the wells of real-world issues. At that point, you can have "evil Drow" as a convenient bad guy because you aren't saying something about the essence of drow, and therefore about the essentialness of ancestries in general. Unless a group represents a very small population, almost a specific community or tribe rather than a species, race, or ethnicity, each ancestry should represent groups with multiple cultures in them, multiple sects, and multiple nations and kingdoms.
I am stating a hunter-gathered is skilled. What is your problem with that?You did, in the context of it being a subversion of something you deemed Eurocentric. That's horrifying, especially with how blasé you seem about it. I apologize if I was unclear in some way that obfuscated my message. I thought I was clear that Versatile and Skilled do fully apply to people outside the Eurocentric fantasy norm. Hunter-gatherers are skilled, priests with extracurricular skills are versatile. However, I don't think the presentation in P2 suggests that. I think it's clear that humans are "regular" and are considered versatile and skilled,, and I think that has a not-incidental connection to the trope white middle-class people are "regular" and are considered versatile and skilled. I think this is really even clearer when you contrast the Versatile heritage with the Quah Bond feat. Clearly, some humans are more versatile than others. I don't know you, so it's not fair to rely on your understanding of everything I said. I hope that clears up what I was saying. As to those who suggested I was engaging in hit-and-run posting, I already made a lengthy post that elaborates my viewpoint. I don't want to get into a back-and-forth with individual posters. I won't want to overwhelm the discussion with my personal viewpoint. I don't think it's valuable to repeat myself. I do want people to approach these issues with an open mind and develop their own thoughts about them. I do want to make room for other voices. This thread belongs to everyone. I'm not here to stand on a hill and take all comers. My responses are largely going to be to clarify, and to respond to interesting things other people say. If someone wants to ask me a question, by all means, I will try to respond thoughtfully as I am able.
Golarion is a fictional world. Everything in it was put there by a modern author based on their own modern morals.
Anyone who questions whether I am a "real" gamer or just some bored person with an axe to grind is definitely invited to investigate my credentials.
Kasatha is an advanced race, so they are likely to overshadow other 1st level characters. By 12th level, it won't make as much of a difference... the kukri wielding slayer posted above barely outdamages a wizard saying "I cast fireball" and requires a lot more setup.
I don't see how being able to choose feats really refutes my central point. Like if I'm missing one aspect, I'm REALLY missing it because I don't get how that's a refutation at all.
I am stating a hunter-gathered is skilled. What is your problem with that?
I'll note that while the hobbits of the Shire are simple, incorruptible folk, there are are hobbits in Bree that serve ale to Strider and don't blink.
CW: Inclusivity, no pulled punches, also exasperatingly long. Fighting racism and other isms in games means sometimes you have to call out your friends. The people at Paizo, the people who created Pathfinder in general, are great folks. Paizo took an early and consistent stand for dignity and social justice before it was mainstream. Thank you for that. And now I'm going to call them out. Pathfinder 2e made the decision to toss the word "race" and use the term Ancestry. Race, of course, is a loaded term. Its original and strict meaning just means a group of descent. Of course, the era of empire and colonization, followed by a rash of pseudoscience in the 19th and early 20th centuries, have made it a particularly loaded term. It's really hard to argue against the term "race" pretty quickly raising a lot of real world implications any time it's used. So kudos for that. It also conveniently sidesteps whether we are talking about species, subspecies, ethnicities, or perhaps even on-human classes of beings like robots or demons. But changing a term doesn't mean anything if you don't challenge the underlying issues. Early on in P2E, the decision was to "make ancestry matter." It wasn't something something that you simply chose when you made a character, and largely forgot as you advanced in your class. I'm going to show my hand here early and say that there are some problematic implications of saying your character is particularly defined by race and class, and that race is something that follows you throughout your destiny. You can say, okay, you are pulling those terms a little out of context. But the game itself pulls the terms out of context, avoiding a larger real world meaning that colors how those terms are used. D&D gives you a race and class. Everquest, race and class. World of Warcraft, race and class. Pathfinder 2e... ancestry and class. It really seems like a stretch to say it's some coincidence that all these games just happen to ask you a lot about your race and class, despite being mechanically independent and only sharing certain themes. Game designers, do you not hear those words when you repeat them often enough? Or have they been said so many times they've lost a connection to their underlying meaning? Are you the kind of person who in the 21st century could post "What race do you hate?" do the general forum of a roleplaying game message board without flinching? So let's talk about ancestry mattering. There are several aspects to your ancestry. There is your origin. There is your history, which is related. There are stereotypes. And of course, the truth of those stereotypes depends on what what is your esseence. Now, the good part of choosing an ancestry is that all it truly demands is your origin. I mean that, we're off to a good start. As far as history goes, I would expect to see some matters that relate to how a history and culture shape a person. At this point, it has to be considered, to what extent is my history describing a character, and to what extent is it prescribing? Am I adding traits that are logical because of where my character is from and how they were shaped, or do the traits exist to make sure the character conforms to preconceptions of what someone of that ancestry should be? Like, if someone grows up in the USA, I would expect them to speak primarily English, with some speaking primarily Spanish or one of a few Asian languages in the case of certain populations. But if I were describing someone from Kenya, would I say they probably have farmer skills? There are lots of people working in Kenyra in agriculture, though some are not strictly speaking farmers but laborers, mechanics, and so forth. But there are also plenty of non-farmers, such as former army cook and later government economist Barack Obama, Sr. While he grew up in a village and participated in traditional culture, I would not expect him to have exceptional farming skills. For someone to learn a language, such as English, I would expect them to either know it natively, learn it academically, or acquire it through experience. It doesn't say anything about who they are as a person, really. But for someone to be a farmer, or a miner, or a priest, I would expect those characteristics and skills to hinge on opportunity and choice--not, necessarily, ancestry. More to the point, there are farmers of many different ethnicities, and they share many characteristics in common, but don't really share a definable ancestry. Stereotypes raise some tricky issues. Now, stereotypes share a purpose in the human mind. I couldn't shop for groceries if I didn't know what to expect when I ate a banana. I would find it paralytic if I wondered, every time I approached a cashier, if we shared a language in common -- even though, on occasion, I might be surprised and, in fact, they don't speak useful English and require more than the meager Spanish I know. I stereotype doctors as having a university education, and I think of Germans as being predominately light-skinned people of European origin who speak primarily German. Now, imagine I want to characterize a people as being horse-riders, almost from birth. To a great extent that is true of many peoples who have committed to the life of a born rider. Many Native Americans, over the course of generations, adapted to a lifelong training as riders, beginning when they were very young; the medieval Mongolians, likewise. Japanese samurai were dedicated riders, and while not usually born to the saddle, might train from a very early age if they were to have a military career. In Plato's Republic, Socrates describes a system of education for the ruling elite that begins with expert horsemanship from an early age. In my roleplaying game, I want to make it possible to access this type of exceptional training. At this point, I want to ask a question, though. Is there a quantifiable difference between someone who learned to ride as barely more than a toddler, because they were raised by horseman of the Mongolian steppes, and someone who learned to ride as barely more than a toddler because they were raised by a family of Spanish trick riders? Or even someone who was put on a horse at a young age, and simply spent the next couple of decades riding every minute they weren't sleeping? Is proficiency with an axe something that naturally occurs as a part of being raised among dwarves, or is it something characteristic of dwarf culture but not something every dwarf necessary learns? If I saw all dwarves are trained in traditional weapons, unlike all humans, am I saying dwarves are programmed, destined, or raised for war? In what way is dwarven axe proficiency different or the same as the use of the Welsh longbow, or the Australian boomerage? Moving on, if dwarves are dour and stubborn, is it because that is their nature, or is that just a generality? If a dwarf is gregarious and broad-minded, do they stop being a dwarf? Do they need an exceptional explanation to be a dwarf not raised among stern, unyielding clansman as similar to the stones themselves as to other warm-blooded creatures? To what extent are stereotypes "true?" To the extent they are true, to what extent are they useful or necessary? I'm going to skip the whole debate of how fantasy races correspond to real world people, and go right to humans. Human heritages are pretty straightforward. You can be a half-elf, half-orc, skilled, versatile, or, apparently, Wintertouched. Being a half-elf or half-orc is pretty straightforward. It doesn't mean you belong to any particular ethnicity, it means you have some non-human DNA. Specifically, "You gain the elf trait and low-light vision. In addition, you can select elf, half-elf, and human feats whenever you gain an ancestry feat." So basically you get a minor nonhuman superpower (low-light vision), and you can do things both humans and elves can do. That's satisfyingly non-racist. Now, there are some oddities about treating a nonhuman person and a human mating as though it were kind of just cross-cultural, but in the real world, people are of mixed ancestry, so it's nice how matter-of-factly this is treated. Skilled and Versatile give me pause. Are we saying humans are more capable than other people? Are we saying they are just generally more flexible? There are good in-game reasons to do this, particularly if humans aren't all that powerful otherwise compared to other people. But I'm going to come out here and say this smacks of European and European-American exceptionalism. It's kind of the center of white culture to assume white as the default, and white people as being "regular," of white people having access to pretty much any choice or destiny without limitation, and of having a superior and more knowledgeable cultural than "primitive" or brown people. You can actually twist this around and use those heritages to create a Skilled hunger-gatherer, or a Versatile black prince who trained as priest but is also a skilled rider. The presentation, however, is that humans are "regular," the colorless ancestry. And that's a problem in itself. Every single time a nonhuman ancestry gives something that is a skill or trait and not a superpower, you come closer to suggesting a nonhuman ancestry is an ethnicity. By implication, then, ethnicities are not "regular" human ancestries. Wintertouched is actually a little better. It gives you cold resistance. It notes, "This heritage is most common among the Jadwiga of Irrisen, due to their descent from Baba Yaga, and certain Erutaki touched by the spirits." That's... actually good. It's common, not mandatory. It isn't actually restricted to a certain ethnicity, so anyone can take who can furnish an explanation (in fact, I know real world, European-Americans who seem to have this power for inexplicable reasons). It also serves a useful purpose: it gives a resistance that is otherwise not available to humans, the ability to walk barefood in the snow. It doesn't really say much about a person beyond having this ability, and that certain origins are more likely to have this power. So, good job on that. Let's dig deeper, looking at Feats. Arcane Tattoos states, "You have tattoos on your body corresponding to one of the ancient Thassilonian schools of magic." And that's cool. This feat exists to support the flavor that there is a Thassillonian style of magic, and that it's primarily learned by humans. You could also presumably gain this feat by living in that region, or being taught by a Thassilonia magician. There isn't a restriction, so good on that. This feat isn't racist to humans. ... But is there actually a good reason an elf couldn't get those tattoos? Or why a person couldn't have these powers with a completely different origin to their powers? All it does is give a cantrip. Elves can't have a cantrip? You can't get this power from a magical birthmark, or a distinct magical ancestry? So, I have to downgrade this one, from a cool bit of flavor, to being based on a stereotype, not really a necessary distinction. Haughty Obstinancy is another feat, which states: "Your powerful ego makes it harder for others to order you around." So, this isn't racist, at least, against various groups of humans. It doesn't imply anything about Thasillonians, or Belgians. But is there something about this that is particularly human? First of all, I'll note there are real-world human cultures were powerful egos are anathema, so this is a little ethnocentric, a little bit of an erasure. It also feels to me this is masculine-coded. But let's set that aside. What this feat says is that if you know someone is human, you might imagine they have a powerful ego, whereas if there are an elf, you don't. In other words, ancestry is personality. That sounds an alarm bell for me. Further, this isn't necessary or useful as a distinction at all, since can't a member of any ancestry have a powerful ego? Halflings are generally considered vain, not arrogant, but wasn't a Smeagol once a being very much like a halfling? This feat exists purely to reinforce a stereotype about humans. By implication, stereotypes about other ancestries are also valid. There is no argument whether this stereotype is true or not, the game says it's true, which means the developers are saying it's true, and when you implement this in your game, you are saying this is true. When you go out on St. Patrick's Day and perform drunkenness and perform parodies of Irish culture and arts, and talk about being 1/16th Irish with an Irish temper, you are saying you are basically fine with this feat. Just imagine for a minite, if instead of a Human Ancestry, we had an Irish Ancestry, and there was an Irish feat, Irish Temper. From there we can extrapolate Inscrutable Motives for an Oriental Ancestry, and Natural Rhythm for your African Ancestry (which your American mixed-ancestry black can take due to their Half-African Heritage). But wait, I can hear some of you thinking, these are about different non-human ancestries, not ancestries within the human race. Don't worry, I've got you. We've got: Know Oneself
Quah Bond
I particularly appreciate that we get not only a stereotype for the Quah, but stereotypes for the individual tribes. Know Onself, sadly, requires access through the Vuldrani ethnicity, so you won't be able to learn it from a storefront in Los Angeles, California without some kind of feat or permission from the GM. So here are two feats that show that stereotypes about the personalities, characteristics, and skills of human ethnicities are "true." There is no ambiguity, the game says these differences exist, and when you implement these rules, you are saying these differences exist. There are stand-ins for mysterious, mystical Orientals in P2e, and there are stand-ins for traditional tribal people who are all known for one fascinating exotic skill. Don't worry, there are higher levels feats as well, to make sure at 5th level you can "swim like a fish" due to your ancestry, or that, "You’ve learned to split your focus between multiple classes with ease," very handy for people from members of one class who wish to participate in other, and are able to by virtue of their ancestry. P2E has been designed to ensure that ancestry is not just an inconsequential choice you make at character creation, but one that shapes you throughout your life and career as you advance in your class. |
