RazarTuk's page

The short version of this is just that I think clan daggers should be made optional for dwarves, as opposed to something you get by default. The longer version goes into topics like the history of fantasy's racism problem and how dwarves are connected to antisemitic stereotypes.

Long story short, a lot of fantasy TTRPGs have an issue where they tend to assume non-humans come from a mono-culture, and as a result, they give a lot of cultural traits that only make sense if you assume they call came from that same culture. A really easy example of this would be all the X Weapon Familiarity traits in 1e, like how all elves are apparently trained in the longsword. My general rule of thumb for how well a system handles this is something I like to call the Buddy the Elf Test. Essentially, give a character Buddy the Elf's backstory, where they weren't just adopted, but don't even realize they were adopted. For example, maybe a dwarf was adopted by some halflings and grew up thinking they were just big-boned or a dire halfling. Do your racial/ancestral abilities still make sense?

Ideally, the answer should be "Yes". Though in practice, it tends to be closer to "They would, were it not for languages". But for dwarves, they also don't make sense because of clan daggers. For example, your mother could have crawled into the wilderness and died during childbirth, with you only even surviving because you were adopted by those halflings. But because you're a dwarf, by Torag, you still have a clan dagger.

Already, that feels like a good enough reason to make them optional. Even if you want to still give dwarves the option of getting a free clan dagger, no other ancestry gives any sort of cultural artifact by default, so it stands out as weird. But I actually have a second test that really drives some of this home, simply called the Dwarf Test. This isn't quite asking whether dwarves pass the Buddy the Elf Test or not. Rather, it's looking at how they fare relative to other ancestries. So for example, if the baseline in a system is ancestries only failing because of languages, do dwarves fail in any ways that aren't languages? Not only does PF 2e fail that test, but clan daggers are also the only example in any ancestry published for PF 2e thus far of an ancestry failing the Buddy the Elf Test in a way that isn't languages. But to explain why that's even something I'm looking at, we need to go all the way back to Tolkien.

Tolkien's dwarves are Jewish. This is not debated, the man even drew the comparison himself. Granted, he only focused on more neutral traits, like being a people in exile or basing Khuzdûl grammar on Hebrew grammar. But through some combination of purposeful decisions, unquestioned cultural biases, and unfortunate coincidence (see also, the pre-1909 Commonwealth Star in Gringotts not helping Rowling's case), some more antisemitic elements like greed also worked their way in. And, well, it's those same traits that were the most easily borrowed into other settings. So not only do dwarves have an unusually difficult time passing the Buddy the Elf Test, but they even frequently fail because of antisemitic stereotypes like Greed, Hatred, and Xenophobia in PF 1e. (There are even still traces of it in PF 2e's dwarf feat, Vengeful Hatred)

So while I still applaud PF 2e for at least removing any antisemitism from core dwarf features, clan daggers still stand out as the only example of an ancestry getting any cultural traits by default that aren't ancestral languages. (Which, tangent, I also think it's iffy that Avistani ancestries get their local Common, while Mwangi ancestries specifically learn Mwangi, not, say, Taldane or Tien. But I digress. That's not what this post's supposed to be about)

Squiggit wrote:

The proficiency issue is a much bigger one than the action economy, IMO.

The Magus' core gameplay feature revolves around hitting someone with your sword and then a spell and right now Magi are bad at hitting people with spells.

This is on top of Spell Attacks already having a reputation for having accuracy issues and the Magus not really having a way to combine True Strike with Striking Spells (which is the commonly touted solution for spell attacks).

I can't really disagree. The action economy issues would have alleviated it, but the main issue is that it's bad as is - for the reasons you've stated. Not needing a second roll would fix that, but might make attack spells too much better than save spells. The lagging proficiency hurts even more with this - though I could see that being alleviated by using the weapon's potency rune as an item bonus for the spell as well (after all, that's how it's being delivered).

See, I could actually live with still needing two rolls. But yeah, that relies on actually being able to hit with spells.

So... FF5 / Bravely Default Spellblades. You basically get to enchant your weapon, but instead of just being fire/electric/whatever, this can even include things like "For the next however long, you automatically cast Sleep on the enemy". Energize Strikes is reasonably close to this, though the damage is a bit lackluster, and it's odd that it mentions sonic, since sonic spells currently only exist for occult, divine, and primal.

Partly because of that, I'm actually fine with it taking two attack rolls for most spells, and leaning more into spell combat as basically TWF, but one of the weapons is a spell. But viewing it from that angle, it comes up short. You at least get to avoid MAP, but the other major feature of TWF is getting to break the action economy. For example, the Ranger's Twin Takedown gives you two strikes in a single action. But if that's what they were going for with the two attack rolls, it takes one too many actions to activate.

I think the problem is it's too much like PF1: Magus is left trying to full attack in a game that got rid of those.

This is exactly my issue with it. One of the goals of the 3-action action economy was moving away from "I stand there and full attack". But here, we're back to spending your entire turn on one concept. Granted, you can at least split it up over two turns, like Move-Cast-Cast, Spellstrike-Strike-Strike, but it feels like that defeats the purpose of spellstrike. To me, one of the main features of the magus was being able to cheat the action economy, which this fails at.

Though Energize Strikes is at least nice, and gives off major Final Fantasy V Spellblade vibes.

So, is it me or is the grid for the map of Roslar's Coffer on p4 skewed? The vertical lines, in particular, seem to not be equally spaced. I'm finding it next to impossible to grab and drop it in roll20.

I'm suddenly reminded of the Crow in Shattered Star, which must have been designed by Groetus, since there's a spiral staircase that switches which direction it spins each floor.

So am I correct in seeing what I believe to be a reference to D&D or some similar tabletop RPG in The Clerk's Lounge of Salighara's Scriptorium?

Not necessarily. I just read it as literally being about dice and card games. Things like Yahtzee, craps, or rummy. Although it definitely wouldn't be unreasonable to include things like Humans & Households manuals.

The Vexing Daredevil archetype for the Mesmerist gets Greater Mesmerizing Feint as a bonus feat, except they trade away Bold Stare, so this should do nothing. Notably, there's even an asterisk as if there should be a footnote explaining it, but it goes nowhere.

So how does the interaction work / how is it supposed to work?

I deleted my whole post cause I realized you just meant they could not do it as a swift action but that they could still heal themselves with touch of corruption. lol

Yep. Lay on hands? People will want to use that, so you can use it on yourself as a swift. Touch of corruption? What sort of masochist would use it on themself? I mean, you can, but it's still a standard action. Cure Wounds? It'd be annoying to have to deal with SR for healing, so SR only applies if you're attacking the undead with it. Inflict Wounds? I mean, it's a semi-useful combat spell used by evil clerics, so you always deal with SR. Cure Wounds? I mean, I know you're manipulating life energy, but necromancy sounds too evil. Let's just move healing to a conjuration subschool. Inflict Wounds? Evil. Totally evil. Necromancy is fine.

Except those last two questions don't apply to D&D 5e or PF 2e, because they move healing back to necromancy like in AD&D. So if you blindly converted this to one of those systems, you'd encounter SR for any healing whatsoever.

Barring a designer saying it being important that it wards against negative energy, I would just take a more fluid, common-sense approach. The obol wards against whichever type of energy hurts you, and SR doesn't kick in against Inflict spells used to heal, like how Cure spells only have SR when used to damage.

I presume that Hunt Target is based on the PF1 Slayer's Studied Target ability, which costs a move action (or swift action at 7th level). Studied Target makes more sense mechanically, because it gives numerical bonuses for having studied the target. The ranger gains an ability to shoot faster (Hunted Shot) or fight with two weapons (Twin Takedown) because he studied the target. The conceptual connection there is weak. Other PF2 ranger feats try to mimic the simple numerical bonus of Studied Target by removing penalties, which looks kludgey. I presume that this is so that the ranger's feats stack with circumstantial, conditional, or item bonuses, but the result is way too complex for a game that is supposed to be simpler than PF1.

Once again, Spheres of Might has some nice options for martial characters that Paizo could take inspiration from. Specifically, the feat Target Spotting. The actual mechanics are "Make a Knowledge check to identify the creature, or substitute Perception by taking a -5 penalty. If you succeed, you can expend martial focus to treat the target as your highest favored enemy." So basically, Instant Enemy, but limited by the action economy and Knowledge/Perception instead of being a 3rd level spell. (So requiring level 10, 13 Wis, and 3rd level spell slots)

The flavor of the ability is somewhere between the Ranger and the Slayer in 1e. You're still focused on one type of enemy in particular, but you're also good enough at monster lore and/or observation in general to be able to get similar bonuses against creature types that aren't your specialty.

You could argue you'd still have the issue you described when fighting hordes of enemies. But explicitly tying it to a skill check and getting to have a few creature types that don't require it at least feels a little more natural.

most current heritages are nonsensical and arbitrary

My favorite example is Nomadic Halflings. From this, we learn three things:

* Being a nomad and exposed to numerous languages is genetic

* It's impossible to be a nomad with low-light vision or darkvision

* Only halflings can be nomads, which has serious implications for Varisian culture

Basically, it should be two dimensional- Magic/Martial and Low/High-level.

Low-level martial: Vaguely possible in the real world. For example, favored enemy and favored terrain seem realistic enough.

Low-level magic: Impossible in our world, but perfectly ordinary in a fantasy setting. For example, no one would bat an eye at the local priest being able to cast Cure Light Wounds if you need it.

High-level martial: Things that would make Austin Hourigan scream. (Angry science guy from Shoddy Cast and Game Theory) The ideas all make enough sense, like you know what swimming and stealing are. It just breaks all logic to do something like swim through dirt or steal someone's pants without them noticing.

High-level magic: Magic feats that even sound impossible to low-level casters, like a high-ranking member of the clergy even being able to bring back the dead.

The problem is that since both low-level and high-level magic are impossible in our world, the equally impossible high-level martial abilities get lumped in with that. As long as martials are limited to what I've called low-level abilities, while casters can have relatively unlimited power, casters will always overpower martials.

Will casters be able to make martial characters obsolete AGAIN?

TBH, they already can. As I always put it, if martials continue to be strictly held to the precepts of our reality (e.g. weapon cords), while casters are allowed to flagrantly break them, they'll never be even. This isn't saying that martials need magic. Low-level spells, for example, are about as impressive on Golarion as being able to pick a lock. It's that they never get any sort of legendary abilities- just bigger numbers.

Right now, THE ONLY THING martials can do is damage.

And even then, at least 2/3 of a well-built martial's damage output can be attributed to magic items.

Path of War, Spheres of Might, Kirthfinder are things that come of the top of my head where non-casters could do something more than damage and use a skill or two. I was hoping that PF2 will embrace those kind of solutions, instead we got super-mega-extra-nerf to casters. Yes, they said they are rolling some of it back, but I'm not holding my breath for it.

SoM legendary talents are amazing and a good model for what legendary skill feats should have looked like. As an example, you can become so good at swimming that you get a burrow speed. Also, even the combat-oriented talents are amazing. For example, I theorycrafted a Conscript who, eventually, can fire off 6 arrows in a standard action with as high as a 100% hit rate. (As in getting to ignore the rule that natural 1s automatically miss)

mostly because heritage is cultural, full stop

I completely agree with you there. Ancestry and Heritage are backwards, as they're currently being used.

I'm not sure what the problem is with hatred of orcs (or whatever) being cultural. A taught prejudice is indeed entirely cultural.

That's the thing. I want it to just be cultural. The problem is that the current location for cultural things like that seems to be ancestry feats. For one, like we've both acknowledged, heritage feats would be a better name, while ancestry is a better name for what's currently called heritage. But additionally, the moment they decide to add Tien cultural feats, which I strongly suspect they'll do, it will imply that being Tien (so basically, being Asian) is comparable to being a Dwarf, which is exactly the sort of implication they changed from Race to Ancestry to avoid.

If ancestry feats are to be the location for cultural things, they A) need a different name, and B) need to be devoid of biological connections, like having Elf or Dwarf as requirements or having half-elves get special access to Elf feats.

That said, please keep the conversation on the original topic and points of the thread, and do not detract from that content by introducing other fractionalizing topics. If you notice that the conversation is developing a tangent, please create a separate thread to hold that conversation.

I already did. I started a thread over in the Ancestry and Backgrounds subforum about whether ancestry feats should still have the ancestry name attached.

Okay, now that I've gotten the intentionally provocative title out of the way to draw attention to this thread, it's time to talk about Heritage from whichever update that was.

Historically speaking, one of the greatest issues with ancestry/race is that culture was part of it. The AD&D assumption was that non-humans were insular, so you could count on them all coming from a similar culture. Thus, OD&D even had races as classes. We've mostly moved past that point, although it still shows up in a few places. For one, humans have all sorts of languages even just within the Inner Sea Region, but elves from Kyonin and Jinin apparently speak the exact same Elven language. All the core races in 1e have Racial Weapon Familiarity. And dwarves are particularly bad offenders, where half their racial abilities are things like "+1 vs orcs, because you were raised to hate them" or "+2 to Appraise, because you're greedy". (I have a grudge against dwarves)

Heritage was actually a huge step in the right direction. It seems like the intention is to make Heritage more about particular quirks in your physiology, while Ancestry is more about the cultural aspects. Personally, I think the names should be swapped, especially since being an aasimar will probably wind up as a Heritage and Ancestry sounding more like an aasimar's celestial ancestry is my biggest issue with the word, but I digress.

There are still issues with this on both sides of the split. On the Heritage side, some of the heritages are clearly biological. For example, twilight halflings get low-light vision, desert dwarves are more resistant to heat, and, of course, whatever's going on with humans mating with elves and orcs. (Seriously. What does it mean biologically that humans can have viable and fertile offspring with elves and orcs, but elves and orcs can't with each other?) But at the same time, apparently only halflings can be nomads and be experts at learning new languages as a result.

On the other side, by removing the Heritage feats from Playtest version 1.0, the vast majority of Ancestry feats now feel properly cultural, which meshes well with the Adopted feat. But this also has unfortunate implications. For one, it still makes the assumption that all dwarves are raised in a culture that they know to hate orcs and the assumption that anyone adopted by a dwarf would also be raised in such a culture. And second, if Paizo decides to add Tien cultural feats in the equivalent of the Dragon Empires Gazetteer, Ancestry feats would seem like the obvious place to put them (so they can be taken with Adopted), and suddenly that would imply that being Tien is a culture like unto being a Dwarf, which is exactly the sort of implications they're seeking to avoid by not calling Dwarf a race. And finally, it's implicitly still somewhat biological, since the entire benefit of being a half-elf is that you can also take Elf ancestry feats.

Long story short, especially if they focus on Heritage, I'm willing to accept the name change to Ancestry. (Just come up with a better solution to half-elves and half-orcs than "Can take elf/orc feats") But if Ancestry feats are really going to be about culture, then that use specifically of "ancestry" needs a better name, or else we'll be right back to the days of culture-as-biology, which the name change away from "race" was meant to avoid.

I think I'm a bit unusual in that I'm not particularly bothered by ancestry feats granting biological abilities. It's weird, but not particularly weirder than a feat granting you the ability to get so angry that you turn into a dragon.

Nor am I. My issue is that cultural and biological things are being tossed into the same pool. Feat that makes your already hardy dwarven body even hardier? Great. Feat that makes you better at using traditional dwarven weaponry? Great. Just give them separate names. For example, make the former ancestry and the latter heritage. But whatever you call the concept traditionally referred to as race in the end, let's end the days of assuming all dwarves are necessarily raised in a culture that teaches them to hate orcs.

RazarTuk wrote:

MaxAstro wrote:

So, ignoring the topic that Paizo has said is not up for debate...

At least in my opinion, it can still be useful to discuss

I don't see the point in discussing the benefits of changing things that Paizo has told us there is no chance they will change, at least not on Paizo's official forums where they have already asked the matter not to be discussed.

I do think there are great discussions to be had about what exactly ancestry should mean in Pathfinder and how it should be represented mechanically, though. The fact that ancestry represents both biological and cultural things, sometimes unevenly, is an interesting point, and I think there's a lot to talk about as far as where that line should be, or how much of which aspect should go into heritages.

That second part is what I said. Race/ancestry seems relevant largely because of the history and how we wound up mixing biology and culture. But especially given the argument about cultural things moving over to ancestry feats, I'd hope they're willing to discuss whether ancestry feats are even connected to this whole concept traditionally called race at all.

Another thing to add is that with the heritage update Ancestry choice isn't just about "Dwarf" or "Elf" but you also define as part of that option whether you are dwarf whose family hails from the desert, or from an important noble line. Ancestry combines both race and more specifically "who your parents/grand parents/great grand parents" were.

I agree with Desna's Avatar that it would work better as two separate fields. For one, it's inconsistent between heritages what they are. For example, Twilight Halfling is fairly explicitly Darwinian, while Nomadic Halfling is extremely cultural. Why are only halfling nomads able to get extra languages because of their extensive travels?

I can definitely get behind this concept of splitting physiological and cultural abilities. But if ancestry feats are going to be the residing place of cultural things, then I very much question if they should still be called ancestry feats. There aren't currently any feats for focusing on Chelian/Vudran/Tien/Ulfen heritage, but if they ever add feats like that (which I expect to happen in the equivalent of the Dragon Empires Gazetteer), ancestry feats would thus be the most logical place to put them. But if that also means my elf from Jinin needs to take something like Adopted (Tien) to qualify for those feats, it will mean we've taken a massive step back toward race-as-class, regardless of the terminology used.

So, ignoring the topic that Paizo has said is not up for debate...

At least in my opinion, it can still be useful to discuss, since it so strongly borders on what we expect to get from ancestry. For example, whether dwarves are best described as a species, a race, or an ancestry and what the choice of word is meant to imply is related to where things like Weapon Familiarity (Dwarf) should go. As an example of that, if calling the concept "ancestry" is meant to emphasize that this is a biological thing, without the complications that arise with calling them species (again, aasimar), then does it make really make sense to say that only creatures with dwarf ancestry can get Weapon Expertise (Dwarf)?

Ancestry could be seen as worse than race as the term is most commonly used for humans of different ethnicities e.g. Swedish or Italian ancestry, or Tutsi or Tibetan ancestry. In this day and age the term ancestry is closely associated with genealogy and ethnic origins of one's ancestors.

That's exactly my issue. Like I said, when I hear the word "ancestry", I sooner expect something like an aasimar talking about having celestial ancestry, not a dwarf talking about having dwarven ancestry. The addition of heritages does a bit to mitigate this, but devoid of any names for things, I'd still assume "ancestry" refers to the thing called heritage in the playtest, not to the standard RPG concept conventionally called race.

Until someone can tell me how "dwarven weapon training" in biologically inherent, I'm fine find with ancestry.

Dwarves are just a hot mess in general as far as this is concerned.

See, back in AD&D days, the assumption was very much that the non-human races were more insular, so cultural components could reasonably be part of racial traits. This was especially true in OD&D when races were classes unto themselves. We've mostly moved past that, which I think is part of the motivation behind the switch to ancestry, but you can still see remnants of it if you know where to look. For example, humans are allowed to have multiple languages, even just within the Inner Sea Region, but the elves of Kyonin and Jinin apparently speak exactly the same Elven language.

Some races are good about this and are almost exclusively biological, like 1e elves and halflings. They have the standard issue racial weapon familiarity and language, but except for elven magic and fearless, virtually everything else could be biological. Contrast with dwarves and gnomes, which typically have more cultural abilities. This is especially true with dwarves, because it's typically in the form of things like a bonus to Appraise, which is probably one of the least used skills.

Perhaps, but the term is inaccurate in the context of the game. Even more so when where things like half-elves, tieflings, and the like get involved. Nothing resembling these creatures exist in the real world which is why no specific real world terms apply to them. Hence we're left with three options:

1. Misuse a real world term like 'species' or 'race'.
2. Make something up out of whole cloth 'metasapients'
3. Confer a specialized meaning to a vague RL term like 'ancestry'

Personally, I favour option 3.

As a partial counterargument, the phrase "the human race" exists.

My primary issue with "ancestry" is that, to me, it sounds more like aasimar having angelic ancestry than dwarves having distinctly dwarven physiology than, say, elven physiology. But at the same time, something like "species" isn't accurate. It would cover things like dwarves, halflings, and gnomes, sure. But aasimar are very distinctly not a separate species from their parent race, and the fact that humans can consistently have viable and fertile offspring with either elves or orcs, but that elves and orcs can't with each other raises all sorts of questions about biology in the standard fantasy setting.

The fact of the matter, which you referenced, is that there isn't anything in the real world that resembles this hodgepodge of biologically distinct species, genes not native to this plane of existence that can magically switch between dominance and recessiveness, and whatever's going on with humans, elves, and orcs, which is conventionally called race. I just draw a different conclusion, where I prefer continuing to just use "race" because it's the least wrong on average, rather than using something like "species" or "ancestry" which accurately describes some of the options (dwarves, gnomes, and halflings for species, or aasimar, tiefling, and other planetouched for ancestry), but not others.

Paladins are holy knights who defend the weak.

[citation needed]

I continue to point out that Retributive Strike is a horrible ability for a guardian to have, since it only works if they failed at being a guardian and let their allies get hurt.

But more generally, I think there's such a thing as too much identity. The fighter is especially guilty of this, since its shtick being "Hit things hard" means no one else can ever be as good at combat. But you can also point to things like light armor paladins fighters not being supported, since there's no way to get legendary proficiency in it.

Remove TAC. That's it. If you were to remove TAC as a mechanic, I think heavy armor would have enough of a trade-off associated with it to be a viable option. But to explain why, I need to start with a brief history lesson on why TAC is a thing.

Way back in war gaming days, your battleship might be described as having 1st class armor, 2nd class armor, 3rd class armor, etc. This is the origin of the term "armor class" and why it was decreasing in AD&D. When porting this concept over to a pseudo-Medieval fantasy setting, Gygax and co. made a list of armor types and ranked them. For example, wearing full plate and carrying a shield was 1st class, wearing full plate without a shield or wearing half plate with one was 2nd class, and wearing half plate without one was 3rd class. Dexterity did affect your AC, but at least in AD&D 1e, it did nothing from 7-14, and changed your AC by 1 point for every point of Dex up or down. (E.g. 15 Dex was -1 AC and 16 Dex was -2) Thus, and this is slightly speculative, going into 3e, the assumption was that the bulk of your AC would come from armor. This will be important in a second.

See, while all this was happening, they were shifting how attack rolls worked. First it was Class x Level x AC tables. Then it was THAC0, which let you generate the entire row for Class x Level with a single value. And eventually, in 3e, they had the idea to simplify attack rolls into the 3.PF BAB+Str/Dex mechanic. But that led to a bit of a problem. Wizards had low BAB so they wouldn't be good with weapons, but that also meant they had a hard time landing spells. Thus, the solution was to create a new type of AC- touch AC- for wizards to target. And- and this is the speculative part- since armor was the main source of AC, wizards could just ignore it.

This, of course, led to a feedback loop. Because armor no longer applied to all of your defenses, it was more useful to invest in Dex and wear lighter armor. But because people weren't wearing armor, wizards had trouble hitting targets again, as long as they didn't rely on natural armor.

This is where UTEML comes in. It and 5e's Proficiency Bonus are both variations on giving you the equivalent of full BAB with weapons you should be good with. Thus, it becomes entirely reasonable to expect casters to be able to hit regular AC, as long as they put a few points in Str/Dex, eliminating the original need for TAC. And at that point, heavy armor would have a purpose again. Given high enough Dex scores, light armor would be superior for not having as many penalties. But heavy armor would have the benefit of immediate gratification, as opposed to needing to wait until relatively high levels for Dex+light to be able to compete.

How to start making heavy armor worth it: Remove TAC.

TAC only exists because when they unified attack rolls in 3.0, WotC ran into a problem where wizards would up unable to easily land their spells. Thus, because armor was the main source of AC, they made a new type of AC that ignoring armor for wizards to target.

Armor class is called as such and was originally descending because of war games. So just like your battleship could have 1st class armor, 2nd class armor, etc, you might have full plate+shield be 1st class, full plate without a shield or half+shield be 2nd class, etc. Dex did affect it if your Dex was high enough, but for 7-14 Dex, it was only a function of armor class. (Double meaning fully intended)

Catch is, this created a sort of feedback loop. Your Dex bonus to AC was more valuable, because it also applied to TAC, so heavy armor started to fall out of favor. And, of course, this just leaves us right back where we started, because wizards are relatively unaffected by light armor. (But admittedly not natural armor, like a dragon's dismally low TAC, hence SR)

Switching to a Starfinder-style KAC/EAC split could be interesting. But whether you change TAC to EAC or just remove it completely, as long as there's an entire class of armor that only really applies to (K)AC and not TAC, no one's going to be interested in it.

And removing TAC is reasonable, now that PF's switching over to unified proficiency bonuses.

idk but it makes sense that ranged attacks (regardless of what it is) require good aiming. Now what attribute/skill is best for aiming is a difficult question, in which pf1 decided its Dex (unless something changes it).

I do agree its kind of odd that a Wizard needs to max out dex to hit better. But isn't that why they also targeted TAC in PF1? So even with suboptimal Dex they could hit most targets baring a horrible roll?

TAC was introduced in 3e because they wanted to unify attack rolls with weapons and particular spells, but ran into the issue of wizards having poor BAB. Thus, because armor was the main method of increasing your AC in systems past (and indeed, that's where the name and decreasing scale came from, e.g. full plate + shield was 1st class armor), they just invented TAC as a way wizards could ignore it.

This, of course, caused Dex to be more attractive as a way to increase your AC, because it also applies to TAC, bringing us right back to where we started. Whether you let casters use their casting stat or not, TAC has definitely served its purpose and no longer needs to exist. (In contrast, however, I think KAC/EAC was a very elegant solution to SF's problem of energy weapon)

What about something like: Remove TAC, let casters use their casting stat for spell attack rolls, make cantrip damage only dice (as opposed to weapons being dice+ability), and either give martials a way to increase damage dice without items or require casters to buy wands to increase cantrip damage.

But if you have a damaging spell that you can use endlessly, I think they should fall into a similar design space to manufactured weapons.

If high-level casters are allowed to flagrantly break the laws of reality, while high-level martials aren't allowed to do anything that's remotely impossible in our world, then no casting system can solve or be blamed for caster-martial disparity.

And for clarity, I'm not talking things like magic missile. I'm comparing something like Wall of Force to, say, becoming such a good swimmer that you gain a burrow speed. (As in swimming through dirt)

Helmic wrote:

pjrogers wrote:

Rysky wrote:

I think I would have liked for Sorcerer to be like/have some Kineticist options, being able to spam things and pump themselves up.

Please! Please! No! Knineticists are my absolute least favorite thing in PF1e. I dislike them even more than trip specialists with reach weapons (which is saying a heck of a lot).

What's wrong with Kineticists? They're fun. They'd just be regular Sorcerers who took a certain option. I don't see a structural issue with them.

They have their own unique set of rules that has virtually nothing to do with how any other class operates. They're like something designed for one game system and then dropped into another.

This all gets interesting with spherecasting. I maintain that Spheres of Power will be incredibly easy to port to PF2e, what with how feat-focused they both are. The difference is primarily that 2e has class-specific feats, while spherecasting amounts to copious numbers of 2e archetypes.

How this relates to kineticists is that kineticists fit fairly well into spherecasting. The entire concept is that you get a handful of free abilities, talents that improve those base abilities, and a handful of spell points for casting more powerful abilities. Add Draining Casting, Emotional Casting, Rigorous Concentration, Somatic Casting I, Fortified Casting, and Empowered Abilities, and you basically have a less janky version of burn.

Level + Con spell points, 1 nonlethal plus 1 per 5 levels any time you use a sphere ability, everything has a thought and emotion component, risk spell failure in medium and heavy armor, use Con as your casting ability, and gain a small bonus to caster level when you start running out of spell points.

Revolver spell slots is definitely what I mean.

I actually like prepared casting. Picking out my spells is fun. Having to guess exactly how many I will need is the part that kills me. Arcanist was a revelation when it came out.

Yep. The anti-Vancian crowd isn't necessarily against spell slots. We just all can't stand having to guess exactly how many times we'll want to cast any given spell. It made sense at first, coming out of war games. Letting a wizard-class character cast the same fireball twice sounded as absurd as letting an artillery-class unit fire the same cannonball twice. But especially from a lore perspective, you can tell basically all the same stories with Arcanist casting, which the entire industry is moving to.

If you switched to Arcanist casting, you'd need to redesign spontaneous casters to give them a more unique niche. I still like the idea of making sorcerers metamagic experts or similar, inspired by the wilder's wild surge. Wizards are better at learning a variety of spells, but sorcerers are better at feeling the magic- ya' know?- and have an easier (if riskier) time empowering their magic.

Alternatively, spherecasting could be incredibly easy to port over, what with how feat-focused 2e already is.

Well, I just hope that whatever form the skill feats take, they at least remember that keeping martial characters very grounded in reality while everything else in the world is high-fantasy is not a good way to keep things.

I've been noticing this quite well, one of the biggest problems with Martial/Caster disparity is exactly this. Martial characters are chained to a lot of rules, conceptions and restraints that spellcasters simply don't follow.

Nothing wrong with letting a martial character of very high-level move fast enough (not necessarily increasing the amount of movement) that they resemble a lot of fighters in anime (that fast movement thing that only leaves a blur). For example, the rogue can move so fast that all attacks of opportunity are treated as if he's having full concealment during his movement. Badass and strong. Now if it's too insane to allow it at-will, just gate it behind some drawback. Sorry to go into a tangent here.

Yep. Calling abilities like that "magic" is a discredit to all casters. Sure, magic missile might be impossible in our world, but with a bit of effort, theoretically anyone on Golarion could learn to cast it. Bragging that you can summon a tiny bullet of magical force that dissipates after a split second would be like bragging that you taught yourself to pick locks. Wall of force, on the other hand, is impressive. You're taking that same magical energy from magic missile, but making an entire wall that lasts for an entire minute, if not longer. It would seem impossible to even a low-level wizard.

Being able to move so fast through acrobatics that enemies get a miss chance against you isn't magic. It's the martial equivalent of the seemingly impossible feats we already let high-level casters do.

I'd still prefer an alternative to Vancian casting since it's not at all my favorite. How does Arcanist-style casting work?

Full prepared casting- You pick which spells you want to cast and how many times you want to be able to cast each one

Spontaneous casting- You only have so many spells known, but don't have to decide in advance what spell you'll use each slot for.

Hybrid, Arcanist, or semi-prepared casting- You can learn as many spells as you want in a spellbook, and each morning you select a handful of spells to cast from spontaneously.

The mechanical one is the "analysis paralysis" of having so much options and having to choose some of them. Pure Vancian casting increases this exponentialy because now after choosing a sublist to be avaliable for you for the day from the bigger list, you also have to choose how much you'll use each one before actually being sure of what the situation asks for. I do find however that they get even more confused by Clerics and Druids because they have to choose from... all spells in existance, I don't find Wizards more complicated than those two in that regard.

Yep. You can't fix it by just patching the wizard to vaguely resemble the Arcanist, because the problem is that you still have to decide how many times you want to cast each spell per day. There's a reason that 5e shifted over to Arcanist casting, and that potential players coming over from 5e have been turned off by full prepared casting.

The storytelling aspect just comes down to the question "why does my character forget a spell after casting it?". Almost no one is familiar with Jack Vance's books nowadays, and apart from his world where there was a reason, although albeit complex, for it to be this way, it doesn't really make much sense. I mean, it's not that hard to explain why you prepare spells from your book, you can't just memorize an entire book for the entire day, but the part about having to prepare each casting... yeah... it's weird. I think you can probably see why people get confused if you try that little challenge: Try to explain to someone who has never played D&D why do Wizards forget their spells after casting them without resorting to tradition ("it's how it works in D&D for a long time") or to anything specific from the Dying Earth series.

Part of the motivation actually was wargaming. If an artillery unit can't fire the same cannonball twice, why should a wizard- the artillery of the fighter/rogue/mage trio- be able to fire the same fireball twice?

On a similar and opposite note, things like Harry Potter are rising to prominence in the place of Jack Vance. It's easy enough to accept spell slots as a means of balance, even if spell slots or spherecasting (roughly kineticist, but without the nonlethal from burn) would be a better fit. But compared to just picking what spells you want to be able to cast in the day, it's significantly more odd to have to decide exactly how many times you want to be able to cast Lumos in the day.

RazarTuk wrote:

I still think Weapon Proficiency as a feat needs changed, but it would require reworking weapon proficiency as a concept. One axiom I'm going to assert is that given an infinite number of feats, a character who begins proficient in no weapons or armor should be able to recreate the starting proficiencies of any class. The current feat fails that because it makes you jump to "All martial", when classes can start with individual martial weapons.

What I would do is have proficiency be on a per-group basis, where you pick some number of groups to be trained in for every class, the fighter class abilities to advance proficiency let you raise so many groups by one step, and, pertinent to this thread, the Weapon Proficiency feat reads along the lines of:

Select one weapon group you are either Trained or Untrained in. If you are Untrained, raise your proficiency to Trained. If you are Trained, raise your proficiency to Expert.

I would have liked a much more thorough change to the weapon proficiency system. "All Martial " is a bit boring. I think that proficiency should be weapon group based. for examples that barbarians are trained with 2+int weapon groups plus the brawling group, rangers are experts with 1 weapon group (not including brawling, pole arms and flails maybe), fighters are experts with more weapon groups and not limited in their choices, and so on.

In this case the weapon proficiency feat will be "if you are Trained with at least one weapon group you are trained with an additional weapon group. Your proficiency with this weapon group increases to the maximum weapon proficiency you have (so when you advance to Master with a particular group, this group is advanced to Master too).
Same idea would work for classes that have individual weapon training (add more specific weapons at your highest proficiency)

That's basically what I was describing, although I didn't think to add your clause to the feat, and coming off Spheres of Might, I was more inclined to have a static number of weapon proficiencies.

I still think Weapon Proficiency as a feat needs changed, but it would require reworking weapon proficiency as a concept. One axiom I'm going to assert is that given an infinite number of feats, a character who begins proficient in no weapons or armor should be able to recreate the starting proficiencies of any class. The current feat fails that because it makes you jump to "All martial", when classes can start with individual martial weapons.

What I would do is have proficiency be on a per-group basis, where you pick some number of groups to be trained in for every class, the fighter class abilities to advance proficiency let you raise so many groups by one step, and, pertinent to this thread, the Weapon Proficiency feat reads along the lines of:

Select one weapon group you are either Trained or Untrained in. If you are Untrained, raise your proficiency to Trained. If you are Trained, raise your proficiency to Expert.

Vancian is one of the last holdovers from the days of wargaming. There are other bits like "armor class", "hit dice", and even just "character class" which are carried over, like how floppies survive as the save icon, but Vancian is the last place where it's really obvious. Basically, the attractiveness of Vancian casting was that it made casters the artillery. Your wizard-class unit was no more able to cast the same fireball twice as your artillery-class unit could fire the same cannonball twice.

Character classes are called classes for that reason I just illustrated. Wizard-class and fighter-class were the equivalent of infantry-class or cavalry-class in war games. Armor class is called as such and was descending at first because your battleship might have 1st class armor, 2nd class armor, 3rd class armor, etc. And hit dice have something to do with hitting as hard as X normal humans, but I don't remember that one as well.

Personally, I prefer spell points to spell slots, with Spheres of Power style casting as my personal favorite. (Most things are scaling cantrip level, where you can use them as often as you want, but you have a limited pool of spell points for more powerful effects) Although Arcanist casting is definitely a good compromise. My issue with traditional prepared casting, which I'm sure is what turns many people off to it, is the effort of having to think ahead about what spells you want to cast. At least with Arcanist casting, you don't need to worry about the exact number of any given spell per day.

On a related note, the psionic Wilder and the spherecasting Thaumaturge both provide good examples of what niche the sorcerer could fill. In psionics, you normally can't spend more power points at once than your manifester level, but they can break that rule and go a few points over, at risk of psionic backlash. And similarly, the Thaumaturge can attempt to increase their caster level by a few points at risk of backlash. In other words, where the wizard studies magic and carefully uses it, the sorcerer could just flippantly disregard silly concepts like "safety" and tap into raw magical energy to buff themselves at risk of injury.

Retributive Strike.

Between Retributive Strike's trigger and Smite Evil's conditions (have to witness an ally/innocent be harmed before being able to use it...), 2e paladin does not feel even in terms of flavor like it's about stopping evil, but about avenging buddies. Which may or may not actually correspond to any particularly LG causes. "I don't like my friends getting hurt" is really pretty Neutral. Retributive Strike feels more reminiscent of the Vindictive Bastard ex-paladin archetype than it does of paladins.

And this is in terms of flavor. In terms of gameplay... it's ideal to specifically position oneself in such a way as to not prevent allies from being attacked. That is the opposite of being a paladin. I get that probably these abilities were supposed to feel like "attacking him was a big mistake and you're going to pay for it" cool, but in three segments of Doomsday Dawn as a paladin, it has not felt like that even once for me. It's felt like my main ability differentiating my character from the next guy's, and therefore something where I should be trying to set up chances to use it. But setting up chances to use it means doing things that are cruddy. One of my only mandatory class features encourages not roleplaying that class.

It's also still hard on archer paladins, even with Ranged Reprisal helping a bit. And archer paladins don't need more disadvantage on top of archery losing the feats that made it strong and being stuck with +2 Str.

I think it can work and be cool as an optional class feat with less of the class's scaling and power based around it, but I don't think it should be a central ability.

I brought this up a lot in the Tanky Fighter thread, but Spheres of Might actually did a really good job with this concept. Anyone who takes the challenge package of the Guardian sphere can challenge an enemy, which gives the enemy a +2 bonus to hitting you and a scaling penalty (-2 to -7) to hitting anyone else. Add levels in the Sentinel class, and you also get scaling bonuses (+1 to +5) to attack and damage against the enemy and you can make attacks of opportunity whenever it attacks something besides you.

Mechanically, that last part is virtually identical to Retributive Strike. But the rest of the abilities reframe it from "Go ahead of me, so I can hit things that hurt you" to "Evildoer, you will be hurt if you attack anyone who isn't me".

That's what's nice about Guardian-style "taunting". You still have agency over your actions. You're just stuck in a lose-lose situation, where you can either attack the wall of meat as an exercise in futility or get punished with penalties and attacks of opportunity for ignoring them.

I fully acknowledge that this is extremely pedantic to be pointing out, and it only even has remotely meaningful consequences 1 day of the year (though up to 2 days from 2024 to 2031). But I figured it's an entertaining enough detail to point out anyway:

It isn't Kuthona 21st today. It's Kuthona 22nd.

See, we all assume Golarion's calendar exactly matches ours, except for changing the names of the months and adding 2700 to the year. But, canonically speaking, Golarion only has leap years every 8 years, as opposed to the Gregorian rule of "Every 4 years, except century years aren't leap years, except years divisible by 400 are still leap years". This means, AD 2016 was a leap year and February had 29 days in it, but 4716 AR wasn't a leap year, so Calistril only had 28 days that year.

Thus, assuming April 12th, AD 2011 = Gozran 12th, 4711 AR as the release date of the Inner Sea World Guide is a fixed point, we've actually been a day behind Golarion for nearly three years now. This is just relatively inconsequential, since the year is (to the best of my knowledge) the only thing that remotely matters, and that's currently only wrong one day out of every year at the moment- Gregorian New Year's Eve being Golarion New Year's Day.

Paladins being shoehorned into a babysitter role.

Paladins losing their main combat trick if they're solo, so you can't bravely hold an enemy back while everyone flees.

I saw this pointed out on Reddit a few days ago, and I think it's relevant to the pigeonhole concept:

Alignment is asymmetric. Jumping straight in with an example, a LG character probably has more in common with a CG character than with a LE one. Sure, the two Lawful characters might both care about the law, but if I see the law as something that should be used to help people, I would find it abhorrent that LE characters only care about the law insofar as it helps themselves. I'd much rather work with a CG character, because we can at least agree on the general principle of helping people, even if we disagree on how we should go about it.

We also see bits of this in outsiders. Aasimar and tieflings can come from any good/evil plane, while aphorites and ganzi are only LN and CN. Angels can be any good alignment, and there's only even the one Good planar language, while devils and demons are strictly LE and CE and even have their own languages.

Law-Chaos is mostly just what flavor of Good/Neutral/Evil you are, and that's especially the case with Good alignments.

Add in my issue with Law vs Chaos being subjective (for example, what happens if a rogue's guild has laws that conflict with governmental laws?), and it really does feel like odd stereotypes to assume that chaotic-flavored champions would only ever care about liberation and lawful-flavored champions would only ever care about defense.

Dekalinder wrote:

"DM of the ring" should be an obbligatory read for everyone who wishes to become a DM

Link, please? (Okay, I'm lazy. :-))

Ask and ye shall receive

The problem is that the main way they kept strength from being completely dumpable was carrying capacity, which was widely ignored.

I don't know if modern fencing is really an appropriate model for everything in fantasy swordfighting because, unless things have changed a lot since I last fenced, we are not actually pushing our blades through people hopefully penetrating armor and puncturing vital areas like someone in a life or death situation would.

Which is to say I think a general dex-to-damage option would be fine if it had a prerequisite of, say, 14 strength.

It is. It's actually true with swords in general, which act like giant levers. For example, you don't need to be ripped to operate a steak knife because of the slashing motion, as opposed to chopping with an axe.

The only reason Strength is the attack and damage stat for melee weapons and is distinct from Constitution is that Gary Gygax wanted one stat per class- Fighterness/Strength, Wizardness/Intelligence, Clericness/Wisdom, and Rogueness/Dexterity- plus two stats that anyone can appreciate- Endurance/Constitution and Leadership/Charisma.

Combat was the purview of fighters, so it was keyed off Fighterness.

Also,

Remove constitution and merge it's mechanics to strength.

Let's see how many are willing to dump str then.

If I were designing ability scores from the ground up, this would be one of the changes.

Body covers all of Constitution and most of Strength.

Agility covers all of Dexterity and the to-hit parts of Strength.

Mind covers all of Intelligence and most of Wisdom.

Spirit covers Charisma and the Wisdom as it applies to Will saves against charm and compulsion.

All four are reasonably well-defined. And especially because each one now has a saving throw, they all have penalties for being dumped.

How one handed vs agile vs two handed weapons are balanced compared to each other already has the annoying issue of their relative balance changing as they level.

They aren't, though. They removed TWF giving extra attacks. The balance was from being able to use a greatsword to deal 2d6+1.5*Str in one hit vs a rapier and shortsword to also deal 2d6+1.5*Str, but in two hits.

Honestly, Str to hit and damage is one of the biggest sacred cows. If you think about it, Dex makes more sense for slashing weapons. (As opposed to chopping weapons like axes) Swords are basically giant levers, so you don't need to be strong. For example, you don't need to be ripped to operate a steak knife. Meanwhile, plenty of games downplay the role of strength in archery, thinking archers should look like Legolas with no muscle mass. When in reality, English longbows may have had draw weights of as much as 180 lbs. In other words, you're literally lifting a 180 lb weight with two fingers, and with Rapid Shot, doing it as rapidly as 5 times in 6 seconds.

The only reason that Strength is the important stat for most of attacking is that Gary Gygax wanted a stat for each class. The six ability scores were Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma- in order, Fighterness, Wizardness, Clericness, Rogueness, and then Endurance and Leadership for everyone. Melee combat was the purview of fighters, so Fighterness was the natural ability score to use.

The Dex fighter crowd makes sense, because in moving away from that model of ability scores, there's no longer any intuitive reason that you shouldn't be able to finesse a weapon. Str to attack and damage is part of the sacred cow that is the 6 ability scores.

RazarTuk wrote:

I continue to point out that Cavaliers in 1e were already basically non-magical paladins of any alignment. Challenge = Smite, Order = Code, Banner = Auras, Mount = Mount Bond...

If I want to play a non-LG paladin then I don't want a non-magical paladin though. So that's not particularly relevant to the conversation.

My point was that there's precedent for non-lawful characters following codes. Not to mention the whole ambiguity of which code. Like is a mafioso chaotic for breaking the law, or lawful for abiding by an internal code of honor?

Well, if removing ability scores entirely would not satisfy most gamers, then I wish Paizo at least give ability scores back to monsters, instead of just giving them ability modifiers. I know ability scores mean nothing to monsters but the fact that only PCs have ability scores makes me feel like PCs and NPCs live in two entirely different worlds.

I mean, we already decided in a different thread that PCs are Darwinian failures who actually need potency runes to do damage, while NPCs get extra damage dice for free...

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

I'm all for Ability Scores disappearing. In fact, I've stated this opinion on a few surveys. Remove an unnecessary layer of complication - to my knowledge they're only used for ability boosts above 18 and that's not enough usage to justify scores.

Especially as the above 18 score boost reduction leads to what feels like 4 levels of a wasted choice (which is seriously bad design in my eyes, where else is acceptable to have a player pick something for their character that is GUARANTEED to be useless for the next 20 sessions) and worse has players ask the question "what level do we think we'll get to? I don't want to buff my main stat if we are never getting to 10."

A comparison:

5e- Start with 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 before racials. Racials are typically a +1 and a +2. Every four levels, increase 1 score by +2 or 2 scores by +1, but there's a hard cap at 20. You can always get two scores to the cap by level 20, or even 16 if you aren't a human. If you're really determined, you can even get one up there by level 8.

PFPT- Start with one of 11+ arrays, although the most common will probably by 18/16/12/12/10/10, 16/16/14/12/10/10, 18/14/14/12/10/10, 16/14/14/14/10/10. Every five levels, increase 1 score by +2 if it's below 18 or by +1 if it's 18 or above. I.e., there's a soft cap at 18. Similarly to 5e, you can always get 2 stats to the cap, but never more than that. Unlike 5e, you'll probably have one stat at the cap at level 1, unless you make an effort to distribute your boosts more evenly. (For example, by not putting any of your four free boosts into your key ability)

The problem isn't the 18+ reduction. It's that you can literally start at the soft cap, making it feel like an Absurdly Low Level Cap. (Warning: TV Tropes link)

Sure, I can take Power Attack, and the damage would seldom increase when I mix it with Forceful weapons such as the Scimitar and the Orc NeckSplitter.

Don't take PA. It's a trap. If you have any level of potency rune on your weapon, it's a straight downgrade. I forget the name of it, but the feat that lets you ignore your second strike for MAP if it misses is much better.