Rhys_Prime's page

For now, it looks like Large weapons have the same damage die as smaller one, means they offer no benefits at all most of time (unles you have Titan Maul and raging). That looks lacking, especially when it comes to some really huge,gargrantuan, colossal creatures. A storm giants two-hander doing same damage as human 2-handed?.. Not sure it is a good idea.

It's even worse than that because Regular small/medium characters can use large weapons, and have the clumsy penalty. It's basically hey you get this big penalty, for no bonus, and uhhh yeah you do a bit more rage damage but uh, not as much as other better instincts. It's pretty awful RAW. Honestly Raw there's no mechanical reason to take it over Dragon instinct, just flavor really.

Also it's ridiculous that it says you can use a weapon built for a large creature as though that's a power granted to you by the instinct... it's just something you can do as a small/medium character.

I would at least give my players the damage step increase or get rid of the clumsy while raging. Otherwise you're literally trading -dex for 2 damage with 0 other benefits, that's pretty awful. Not to mention that when you get the additional growth abilities all you're getting is 5 reach since your weapon doesn't increase its damage die either. Not to mention you're now clumsy 2... get the hell out of here with that garbage. lol... Your equipment grows with you... it's pretty awful.

Definitely requires some serious tweaking.

There are lots of will save effects which don't have the Incapacitation trait though. So giving them a raw bonus increase means it is harder to get spells like Fear to stick, too. It also doesn't make much sense thematically to increase will if it is supposed to be a monster's bad save.

And if you give them a boost to all saves, you've just made most spells worse off instead of the small selection of Incapacitation spells. PF2 is very easy to house rule... If you don't mess with the underlying math.

The best approach, IMO, is to make sure your players are aware of the Incapacitation trait and encourage them to have a varied spell selection.

It's very specifically a bonus to saves against spells which currently have the incapacitate tag. other spells are not affected.

While you don't know the exact level of creatures just by looking at them, you can definitely get the hang of estimating things that are probably a few levels below the party or thing's that may be too strong for an incapacitate in your highest level slot, especially after there's been a round or two of action.

If you do remove the incapacitate tag as a house rule, though, why would you only increase will saves for higher level enemies, instead of all saves vs formerly incapacitate effects?

The purpose of the incapacitate tag is to prevent their use on higher level enemies specifically (as near as I can determine design intent based on how it's written), they literally just auto-fail. Which is never a good design space in my personal opinion (the auto-failing), especially when based on incomplete information. Also getting a feel for whether an enemy is higher level or not requires a lot of player meta knowledge, which ideally we would want to avoid.

So to directly answer your question, I feel that the saves relative to higher level keeps the intention of the tag which is to prevent enchanters from simply dominating the boss easily and trivializing encounters, but still allows them to be useful, and have the potential to succeed in their chosen play style. If there was an incapacitate effect that wanted a fort save of a Reflex save I would apply that in the same way, this discussion was basically along the lines of Will saves because it's most prevalent in the enchantment school of magic. I'd also toy with the idea of using a higher level spell on a lower level enemy giving them a penalty to their save as well, but I don't know if that's TOO busy or too strong.

"Also, I disagree it's losing a spell, so much as making a poor tactical choice and having natural consequences (not punishment).
Or maybe it's a poor strategic choice for going with spells that you cannot cast with confidence. Either way, I wouldn't put the onus upon the GM to aid my estimating of enemy prowess would I to play a caster focused on Incapacitation spells."

I was with you til this point. At this point if the information to make sound tactical or strategic choices will always be obscured from players as there is no way in system to get information Vital to those spells being effective, then taking them is always a poor strategic and tactical choice, which severely limits the player space and is not very well supporting the enchanter play style.

Personally I like the Idea of removing the incapacitate tag, and essentially giving enemies a +1 to will save per level they exceed the spell level for those spells. This makes using a lower level incapacitate spell significantly less effective but still possible, and doesn't cause it to always fail. At that point you can tell players about a Relative strength and let them decide whether the risk is worth it to possibly waste a low level spell with very little chance to succeed or to blow a higher level spell for a much better chance.