However despite that just because a few of you feel they are bad design choices does not in fact make them bad design choices. :Cornette Face: Seriously? Come on, man. Explain why locking playstyles behind LG-only is a good design idea. I've done my share of the work in showing why it's a bad idea, you need to offer a counter-argument instead of 'nuh uh!'
Just because you don't like them does not make them poor design choices. However, several of us have explained in detail why they're poor design choices.
gwynfrid: I've been every bit as enthusiastic in praising them when they get things right. And up until this point, they got far more right than wrong. In this case, it's a mix of elements. Poor initial design choice, poor history of working with this topic in PF1E, and lack of any concrete details for a future fix in PF2E leave me sitting there going "...This is actually bad enough to make me look up your competition and see if they want me." And the more I read up on 5E, the more I like it. This blog post to promote PF2E literally sent me to the competitor they're trying to respond to. Paizo can still win me back, but I want more than very vague 'maybe' thoughts about it. I want more than 'potential' (and I agree with Mark's statements that this PF2E Paladin, as described so far, has more potential to be adapted for other alignments than the PF1E one did). I need meaningful details on how they'll fix this gap in design space.
Okay, so I've had the chance to sleep on it and see lots of good replies. Let me get into them. Seriously, somebody at Paizo just cancel RickDias' order and put him out of his misery (and our's). If my pointing out a huge design-space flaw is 'your misery', too bad. CorvusMask: I don't think they're doing it to me on a personal level. I do think they're making a huge mistake here, locking out a pretty interesting playstyle behind a single alignment and offering no real equivalent to it for the other 8 alignments. Their competitor offers equivalents and did so in a pretty strong, interesting way. I'm deeply surprised Pathfinder has consistently been so cautious about this and now doubled down on it. Mark: I appreciate the response. Based on what you had to say, and some of Wei Ji's remarks, I went ahead and read the rest of the design article. Let me start with the good part. You're right that this class as described looks to be more adaptable for future use. I can easily agree to that; the partial details we have here are enough for me to agree with this part of your statement. That said? I'm even more upset now. This is worse than I thought it was initially, Pathfinder 2E appears to be locking the 'tank' playstyle behind Lawful Good, or at least giving Lawful Good (and only LG at this time) access to the most dedicated form of it. This is even more upsetting from a game design level. You've indicated there's definitely a 'maybe chance' here for adapting it to other alignments. There are three problems with this. First, it's a 'maybe.' I understand you can't lock Paizo down to definite promises at this point in the process. It nonetheless sucks from a customer standpoint. Second, there's no timetable for when this 'maybe' might happen. Would it take years for these adaptations to come out? The Core Rulebook Playtest really was the best possible time to try this out and see if the game collapses in upon itself or not. There's no way you'll get this volume of feedback later on for trying the idea. Third, Paizo's history with this particular topic is... kind of lacking. It's clearly on your radar. The Martial Artist archetype (PF1E Monk) and Grey Paladin archetype (PF1E Paladin) show you're aware of the desire for this sort of expansion. It's just that those archetypes are really bad, and not fun to play. Without clear details, it's hard to take Paizo at their word that this might be fixed in the future. Now... I do appreciate the personal reply. I also think that on the whole, PF2E has done a lot of good design choices. I just feel this one is an egregiously bad decision and I don't have much faith in Paizo's ability to fix it later. You're locking down a variety of playstyle elements (the 'martial plus healing plus expressive Charisma' thing I mentioned, plus the tanking aspects others have mentioned) to LG only, and that's overly cautious. Please reconsider this.
Hmmm... I can't really get behind the tone of the rest of your post, That's okay. You shouldn't get behind the tone of my posts. I am pretty hurt and angry right now. I am posting from 'hurt and angry and surprised in very bad ways and I feel like I stupidly wasted my money supporting Paizo in this endeavor.' Very little of what I'm doing right now is according-to-Hoyle for proper debate. I'm simply well beyond caring, even as I fully acknowledge it's not quite good form.
Sure, I'll play along. Let me offer a thought for one of the alignments. Neutral Good: This alignment is primarily concerned with Good, with benefit for others (whether this be charity, protection, emotional support, community-building, redeeming evil, or any other form of either providing benefit or reducing harm). It is not especially beholden to lawful entities, though may try to cooperate with them if it is practical to do so and expect that entity to help others or reduce harm. Notably, a person of Neutral Good alignment tends to wind up on this path through a fairly thorough social philosophy... or the distinct lack thereof. In the former case, the individual may express clear reasons for why they make decisions based primarily on how much good that choice will result in. In the latter case, the individual may be consistently kind and considerate of others but either lacks the intelligence or the education to have a strong 'social philosophy.' For example, a child that has not studied politics (and currently has no understanding of the benefits and drawbacks to various social structures) but is still truly kind to people might be considered Neutral Good. Neutral Good is willing to tell the town guards about a problem if they have a reasonable belief the guards will react in a way that promotes Good. However, if they feel the guards will either ignore the problem or condone it, or would be unable to effectively deal with the problem (for example, the problem definitely would kill the average guard) then a Neutral Good individual is willing to simply ignore the rules in order to do what they feel will result in the most Good in the situation.
Lawful Good deities probably don't have Barbarians, or Druids either. Erastil would like a word with you. https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Erastil There are mentions of Druid followers among his faithful.
Though... Paizo never promised you Alignment free Paladins. You're right, they didn't. I trusted them to continue being willing to try interesting new ideas and then walk back if they present a problem. This is the idea of a playtest. They had, up until this point, shown lots of good game design decisions. Enough good decisions that I, in hindsight naively and stupidly, trusted them to continue guiding the game in directions I supported. I am now currently pondering how much ill-will I wish to generate with Paizo's financial dept. and my card issuer to get my money back because this is one hell of a point for Paizo to start dropping the ball this badly. To use language we both understand: I didn't want them to take Street Fighter's Ryu away from you. I wanted them to either let me pick Ryu with a different costume... or failing that, let me pick Ken or Sakura or Sagat; 'mostly the same basic features, but expressed differently and with different finer details.' Right now I'm not getting either of those options. If making Paladin non-LG-only would have chased you off, then I expected a compromise solution wherein a similar but distinct class was made available. Failing that, I wanted clear plans up front on how they would accomplish this later on and a timetable for doing so. I got none of this. This sucks.
As far as making everyone happy goes, here's where I'd be willing to compromise: Make a class with the following features. Alignment: Any
Do it in a blend reasonably close to what the Paladin has and I will be totally satisfied. You can call it the Crusader or the Zealot or the Cobra Kai Never Dies or whatever, it doesn't have to be called 'Paladin.' Doesn't even have to be mechanically identical to Paladin. Just has to be 'melee primary, with some modest access to healing and buffs to do nice things for their teammates from time to time' and I'm totally happy with it. Problem is Paizo has a very poor history with actually providing this. I don't trust them to make good on it now, not when every previous attempt at it has been so low-quality and not fun to play. I want a specific, clear commitment to a real take on this idea before I'll be satisfied. I want details and timelines. Vague assurances on this particular topic are worth very little from Paizo because they have consistently shown throughout the last several years that they're aware players want this sort of thing but their attempts have all been really lacking in the end. I don't use Martial Artist on Monk, nor Grey Paladin on Paladin. I'm not trying to banish the Shining White Knight Atop A Charger from Pathfinder. I'm trying to get Martial Primary plus Some Healing And Buffing on a Charisma-driven class without being tied to Lawful Good. PF1E doesn't have any good options for this (I won't say 'no options at all', because it does have them, they just suck). All told, I'm very upset by this decision and it has gutted my interest in PF2E. Which is a shame, because up until now they had been making some interesting changes which I supported. I trusted Paizo enough to drop the $60 or so for the special playtest book. And right now, I feel like an idiot for doing so. I am strongly considering getting my money back from my card issuer (no ethical concerns here; the product hasn't shipped yet, it's months out from shipping and I have no doubt they'll be able to sell 'my' copy to someone else at full price). "Paizo might block you from future purchases anyway if you do that", one might note. I'm too angry to care right now.
In the face of this i kind of hope you find another game that fits your requirements, Tempting. I hear WotC apparently wants my money now. I was hoping the developers at Paizo would be bold enough to try some new design space on opening up this play-style to other alignments. I was hoping feedback over the last few weeks would help them mold the product in that direction. It did not happen.
Which is thunderingly, completely useless for PFS play! I can't 'sidebar' anything in PFS! It's PFS Rules or nothing in this regard!
If it is so important to you. Make them any alignment when you are Gming the game or just find a GM that agrees with that view. This thread seems to have some. Problem: Not an option in PFS play. In other words, you're basically telling me to stay away from an entire major play venue. Apparently eventually other classes might come to fill the gaps of the other alignments, which if made right, would actually be a great boon to the system with each concept having its own champion. Problem: Paizo has a very bad track history with making such variants really, really bad and boring and not fun. They need to be forthcoming with clear, specific, interesting details on such 'champions of alignment' variations if they want me to calm down.
Would you be willing to tell those players to shove off? To go away? They've been here supporting Paizo as long as any other players. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. And yes some more. Literally the 'other side' of this is saying I must play a very specific alignment in order to have access to a fairly broad, interesting play-style. The reasoning for it, reasoning you presented, was decisions made by someone decades ago ('respect Gygax tradition' or something to that effect). I'd like to think it's okay for a game to evolve decades later. To at least try and see if we can expand and have a new kind of fun. A kind of fun that 5E tried and it didn't spontaneously combust in a blaze of anti-high-fantasy. If someone is saying we shouldn't try something like this, that I should only be allowed access to that playstyle if I tailor it around a fairly specific personality set, then I will in fact take that confrontational option you've offered me re: tell them off. I don't like people trying to limit my fun because Gygax.
Thanks to limited space, they won't put in new paladins at this point. It's a playtest, you cannot possibly test everything. They made their point well and were honest and open about it. I can't respect this reasoning. A playtest is for major changes like this.
Didn't even bother reading the rest of the post once you confirmed this class and playstyle is LG-only. There was some 'if' language in there about possibly revisiting this at a later time, but given the efforts so far in PF1E (such as the breathtakingly un-fun 'Grey Paladin')... I do not hold high hopes. This has seriously damaged my interest in your product and I am considering revoking my preorder for the playtest or at least downgrading it to one of the less fancy editions. I'll think about it some this evening. Feel free to try to talk me out of it. Edit: I see preorders locked. So it's 'cancel and get nothing or stay on your current preorder.' And since said orders are now locked into 'pending', I may take the matter up with my card issuer to seek a refund. I am strongly leaning toward 'cancel and get nothing.' I am very disappointed in this decision; why would you lock a major play-style like this to only 1 of the alignments? It's not like it's an obscure blend.
the first being a player that seems to constantly want to violate their codes (forgetting happens, as do unfortunate situations, but a player should have a fairly good idea of acceptable behaviors). I've seen this a few times. It's rather annoying when it happens. The second is that the GM asks constantly even when the player is acting in good faith or clearly not trying to violate their codes - in other words, the GM is constantly looking for a reason to strip the player's character of powers The game rules can only go so far in catching bully GMs. I've seen GMs go out of their way to shame a male player for not playing a 'manly class' (the guy was playing a Bard). Or throw in nonstop sexism in every adventure with every NPC just piling all kinds of awful remarks on female characters. I'm very sympathetic to the problems that can arise from my proposal, as I've seen both really awful players and outright cruel GMs. However, I truly do feel that it's a better use of developer time and rulebook space to 'soft rule' these, to lay down expectations, than to try explicitly policing it with the 'gradual fall' rules proposed in this thread.
Certain classes go beyond being just a bunch of powers tagged together, which is a great thing. Any well written character goes beyond being just a bunch of powers tagged together. I could say the EXACT SAME THING about any well written Wizard, Sorcerer, Ranger, Monk, whatever.
Here's the thing. What I just described is a playstyle that ought to be open to a far wider range of concepts than 'LG only.' It doesn't have to be called a Paladin, but I damn well want the playstyle I described to be more widely available. Im honestly quite glad the devs are not only keeping alignment restrictions (snip) paladin (snip) Would like a citation on the alignment restriction being retained for 2E Paladins. First I've heard of this. Playing a paladin means something, So does playing a Fighter, Sorcerer, Bard, Cleric, Warpriest, Skald, Magus, etc. Your elitism is showing. You might want to tend to that.
"Paladin" "Overpowered" I think I just turned into the dog from Duck Hunt, in real life.
Remind me not to share a table with you. You seem to hate fun. Why in the world a fairly intuitive playstyle like 'martial focus with modest amounts of healing and buffing functionality, tied to Charisma' needs to be LG only, why letting that be Any Alignment is controversial, is beyond me.
Lots of interesting thoughts here. I'd like to chime in on some of them! Gradual Falling: Hypothetically, this is a better solution than 'binary fall.' It requires a lot of extra design time that I'd rather the developers spend on making the rest of the game better. I feel like there's a superior solution to this, as a result. Therefore I propose a social/cultural solution: Let's shift the solution to the player/GM side rather than the game system side of things. Let's take some of the 'character knows their code better than the player' sentiments in this thread, and include them in the rulebooks. A little blurb about how GMs need to warn/advise players about anathema/falling behavior and discuss it, to see why the player's doing it, would go much further than several pages on gradual fall rules. Imagine something like this at the end of the Anathema rule: "If a PC undertakes actions that would violate their Anathema, the GM must pause play to discuss this with that player and request an explanation for why the PC is doing that. It may be they have a legitimate reason that is consistent with their faith; if so, no 'fall' occurs. If they don't, the GM should explain what the issue is and give the player a chance to retract that action. Excessive incidents requiring the GM to pause the game in this way are grounds for, at GM discretion, waiver of Anathema protections and the PC may fall without further consultation." PFS Organized Play could set their own standards for what 'excessive' is. Regarding Abuse of Shelyn's Rules of Surrender: This is a non-issue for most practical purposes. A murderer shows up, surrenders to Shelyn, and... in the best case scenario? Congratulations, they're now basically a prisoner of a Shelynite temple. They can't leave, and are now surrounded by people whose values are the very opposite of the murderer's. I imagine being trapped in a temple with a lot of people who love art and healing and beauty and niceness and singing and all that fuzzy-goodness stuff would basically be a living hell for such individuals. "And with this stroke of the brush, I shall express the vivid warmth of the forest and the mountains on a summer eveni--" "OH MY GOD SHUT UP SCREW THIS I'M OUTTA HERE" And that's best-case; chances are the Shelynites aren't going to be stupid. They can do, as others said, the obvious thing and go call the local guard to arrange a hand-over of said 'asylum seeker.'
I'm really happy to see that weapons now have multiple damage types where sensible, like on the greatsword. Honestly, all these changes sound fun and give melee characters 'buttons to push' like mages do. I like this!
"Ummm. Please tell me that my Goddess still loves my singing, and not just boring building stuff?" Forgive me if someone has already beaten me to this idea, don't have time to check every post. If they haven't, let me propose this: What about letting Clerics choose from one of two skills that fit their deity? Imagine Shelyn granting Crafting or Perform. Sarenrae granting Heal or Diplomacy. So on and so forth. Not both, but pick one. This would let followers pick which aspect of the deity they favor more...
Nice preview overall, and I remain excited to try out the new edition. However, one note: We were asked if we're eager to try certain character ideas/builds out. ...We... don't really... have enough info to do a 'build.' Nowhere near enough. What I have in my head now are vague concepts; "Holy-magic-themed Sorc." "Sword and Magic wielding wandering scholar." "Polearm fighter who is fairly intelligent." I just don't have enough insight on PF2E to make builds for them, so they remain broad ideas. I'd want a bit more info on the game system before I can share 'builds.'
People who believe that critical fumble rules are somehow "realistic" should really avoid getting into knife fights. Two thoughts: First, everyone should avoid getting into knife fights. They're pretty terrifying. (That said, I understand you were making a somewhat different point entirely) Second, I agree with the overwhelming majority here: This is a bad idea and they've already said everything I would about why it's bad.
I am not fond of this. A polearm whose thrusting or slashing head you manage to get past has another striking surface worth noting: The entire rest of the polearm. It's a long bar of hard-wood. Kind of like a staff or a baseball bat, just with some weight distribution quirks. Hit someone with it and they're going to have a bad day. Getting past the main striking end of a polearm remains a good idea, but let's not act like the shaft is an unwieldy weapon to use.
I'm... cautious about this. The good part is it's unusual, it's different. I like unusual and different. What I'm worried about is this basically being yet more incentive for some players to make unbelievably disruptive PCs. It has been my experience that groups are slow to show such players the door. It has also been my experience that in PFS play they won't be shown the door. That's honestly the sole major point I have in objecting to this. If there's a way to deal with this one problem, then I'm basically okay with Goblin PCs.
Probably a bit late to this one, but... my top five, with an obvious theme: Arcane Healer (Bard): I like the idea of making Bards even more 'constructive' like this. Got it on an Argent Dramaturge oriented Bard a while back and loved it. Hexcrafter (Magus): Solely because it let me add a bit of healing to the class. That was all I wanted, and Hexcrafter delivered! Hospitaler (Paladin): ...Yup, you guessed it; I like healing. Dawnflower Dervish (Bard): Sarenrae-themed content is always fun for me. Eldritch Scion (Magus): I like Cha-driven classes in general. This one came up a bit short in power, giving up too much for too little in return, but the idea of a Cha-driven melee/arcane hybrid was neat. Sorry, going to cheat and add one more. Lore Warden (Fighter): Didn't like the execution, did like the idea; want to see more 'smart Fighter' support in general.
Now that's class, Paizo. Possibly class enough to count as multiclassing. Seriously though, this is a very kind post on your part and I'm glad to see things like this!
I just wanted to chime in on boons, specifically race/ancestry boons... please, no. Don't make these. If a race is too strong for organized play, then ban it outright; don't make it a rare thing people can get. If it's too good for wide distribution, then it's too good to be divvying out to haves and have-nots. If a race is likely going to be popular for certain character concepts, then make extra sure it won't wind up being too strong. EDIT: And be willing to walk it back post-release if you have to. (End edit, resume original post) I was very disappointed the Aasimar was PFS-banned without some boon I had no chance to obtain as a new-ish player, because it would have perfectly fit a few of my character ideas. Didn't want it for the power; I would have gladly played a toned down Aasimar. I wanted it for the flavor. Finding out "Nope, not allowed to do that idea because others ran it into the ground and we weren't willing to issue a balance patch to it... instead, we locked it behind a rare boon so SOME people, but NOT YOU, are allowed to have this specific kind of fun" did a lot to damage my interest in PFS1. I'm mostly sitting out to see how PFS2 turns out, accordingly.
Something I want to see fixed? Weapon weights. Things like 12 pound halberds and so on make me go "WHAT?!" My arms try to imagine wielding a 12 pound polearm and I cringe. Pathfinder 1E's weapon weights are about 1.5x to 2.0x higher than the real things. A typical 'heavy polearm' is 6-8 pounds, and is quite bulky as it is. With the wider availability of information on medieval weaponry today, I'd love to see this fixed!
Speaking as someone who puts ranks of Use Magic Device on every one of my characters so they can lug around CLW wands to take care of the party (because most parties I've played in won't bring much healing of their own...), I'll offer my thoughts on what's so wrong with CLW Wands. It's a damn headache in terms of bookkeeping. After a fight, I have to roll, no lie, 30-50 dice just to get the party back to proper health. "UMD... failed. UMD... failed. UMD... failed. ...UMD, success, here's 1d8+1 heal and I'll mark the charge off the wand... UMD failed natural 1, switching to second wand... UMD success, there's 1d8+1 and I'll mark a charge off THAT wand... UMD failed nat 1, switching to THIRD WAND... UMD success, there's your 1d8+1 and marking a charge off the third wand..." This goes on for a while. It is really, really annoying to me as a player, and to the GM who has to verify all this junk. Gets tiring real fast. I do it because it's smart play and has sometimes made the difference between TPKs or successful adventures, but it sucks. I want a better system.
Count me in as mostly supporting the general idea. There are some cases, such as very narrowly defined playstyles that tie into associated lore, where I'm okay with alignment restrictions. Here's an example that doesn't quite exist in PF1E but would make sense: If the Argent Dramaturge were to have a 'no Evil alignment' requirement, I'd be totally okay with that because it is a very, very specific play style (singing at certain types of evil to hinder it and help allies). The lore backs it, it's a very precise concept, and it makes sense. On the other hand, restrictions for very broad ideas like Monk don't fit. I've met plenty of real-life martial artists who don't have Lawful views on most topics (and half the characters Jackie Chan plays in movies are NG or CG, flagrantly ignoring what the law says), but nonetheless keep up their training pretty well. 9 times out of 10, I want the restriction gone. Where it's maintained, it needs to be supported by both lore and being part of very narrow, theme-specific game mechanics.
There are some other factors to consider. First, 'non-lethal' is a big thing for one of the major faiths in Golarion. Sarenrae strongly prefers it (though even she grants sometimes 'kill them dead' is the right answer). Others like Shelyn probably prefer it too. So it's actually Lore Important that the game get this right. As someone whose favorite character design revolves around "Merciful Intensified Empowered Fireball" and similar ways of non-lethally but decisively ending conflicts, it's something I want to be able to do without needing supporting mechanical choices from the entire rest of the table. I voted 'do it like PF1', but I'm certainly open to mechanical clean-up so GMs don't have to track this extra junk. I just want to be able to do my thing (while still realizing some foes are best killed and some allies will prefer to do this; a true 'pacifist run' is impractical in this kind of game) without burdening the GM or fellow players. However, I do feel part of this can be handled outside the game rules. It should probably be customary at the start of a new group, or a brief discussion at PFS tables, to figure out how this goes. A simple discussion on "Is anyone here playing a character with notably strong feelings about non-lethal combat, or strongly preferring lethal combat?" and working it out from there goes a long way.
I'm becoming increasingly less fond of the color coding that is now the standard in class guides. Even generally solid guide authors sometimes make some pretty egregious mistakes in their color coding. One of the more common traps I've come across when people offer 'color coded advice' is they will look solely at raw damage output and sometimes ignore that range is important too. I'm willing to eat a 30% drop in damage output if it means putting that damage down on someone clear across the map. Especially if they have trouble retaliating in any meaningful way from that distance. Not saying this sort of error happens all the time, or even most of the time, but it comes up often enough that I'm wary of just 'color code-based' feedback. General descriptors like "This is a pretty good option because while its damage output is low, it's extremely accurate and hits out to ranges that most other forms of attacking don't," or "This is honestly too good, it shuts down a foe with a mix of high accuracy, long range, high damage, and a powerful debuff. At least one of these factors needs to go or there needs to be a major limitation on it, because simply improving NPC tactics isn't adequate to deal with this and it's letting my players casually destroy my encounters." Even "I ALWAYS picks Option X on my characters because it does everything Option Y does but better, and this limiting factor tacked on at the end isn't enough to matter. Either X needs to be nerfed a bit or Y needs some improvements, or Y's niche needs to be relevant more often" is good playtest info. Things like that are probably more useful than 'red because it does too little damage', 'orange because it's hard to hit with', etc.
It was too much to hope that Paizo wouldn't jump on the new version train like every other game that has pretty much existed since the original set of RPGs way back in the day. This quote's from yesterday or basically two days ago, but I wanted to reply to it anyway. Basically, Paizo kind of has to do this if they want to stay relevant. I can draw a comparison between this situation and what has happened with classic fighting games (think Street Fighter, Tekken, etc.). One of the staple fighting games is Super Street Fighter II Turbo, made back in 1994. To this day, it's considered a pretty good fighting game, a good piece of insight on the genre's history, and a great way to learn fundamental skills applicable to any fighting game. It's also not selling all that well in 2018. Admittedly this is in part because the systems it was originally on are no longer supported by the market, the arcade boards it runs on are dying off, and so on. The other part of it is that, aside from some remix/remake versions of it... most people who want a copy of 'Super Turbo' already have it. Capcom (the game's publisher) can't keep selling them copies of Super Turbo. Capcom had to move on, because their customers were already satisfied with their purchase of that game and their competitors began making fighting games that drew attention away from Capcom's products. Thus, Capcom began doing new fighting games. Some wildly different (Darkstalkers, Cyberbots, etc.), others more akin to a 'Street Fighter 2nd Edition' such as the Street Fighter Alpha series. Paizo's situation isn't exactly the same (the CRBs apparently still move steady numbers, I'm told?), but it's not completely different either. In the ensuing decade, their competitors have made new games that pull attention away from the classic. Absent a sudden wave of new interest, and I'm not sure how you'd bring that about, the only trend Pathfinder 1.0 can have long-term is downward. Eventually its existing audience will die out. They'll get bored eventually and move on. Or they'll literally die (age, illness, hit by meteors, etc.). Sooner or later, the audience drops below the point of profitability/sustainability. Paizo honestly needs to do a 2.0 in order to have a chance of maintaining an active audience and bringing in new people. Whether it will succeed remains to be seen, but they're doing what they have to from a business standpoint. Super Pathfinder II Turbo (1.0) is a pretty fun game, but the reasons for making Pathfinder Alpha (2.0) are sound and I'm willing to give it a try.
HWalsh, watching you talk down on people who want to play an entirely reasonable play-style ("Martial heavy emphasis with mild healing and buffing, driven by a strong personality") by acting like they don't want to 'pay prices' for 'powers' is insulting. Combined with your talking down on rap singers earlier (which strikes me as potentially kind of racist), at this point I'm comfortable saying this: You are acting in bad faith. You are debating in bad faith. Stop it. That said, to address a proposal others raised about offering a class that isn't called Paladin, but has similar play mechanics: Sold. I'll gladly buy into that class. It can be called the Crusader or whatever. So long as it has "Cha-driven, SIGNIFICANT emphasis on Martial behavior with support as a secondary feature" I am absolutely happy with it. I'm not trying to banish the classical shining knight hero from Pathfinder. I'm trying to make sure other alignments can use the basic set of toys I described above. That's all I want. If changing the label a bit calms down the crowd that was playing back when Gygax first got D&D started, great; do it. Watching the worst of them talk down on people for wanting a reasonable, fun thing in this updated version of the game is wearing on my patience, however. I'm excusing myself from this thread before I start doing things that will probably be quite popular, but also justifiably bring moderators down on me.
Those all sound pretty cool. I'm nonetheless noting that this is a huge limitation on the range of concepts and it should go.
Except it doesn't. Not always. If you want a Wis-based Holy Warrior, sure. Cleric probably works. Warpriest offers tweaks on it too. Works if you're after Wis-driven holy warrior. What if you want a slightly more martial, less buff/heal (but they're still present) Holy Warrior driven more by expressive personality (Cha, not Wis)? You're out of luck unless you want a very specific personality tied to just one alignment.
Personally I conceive of the Paladin (snip by RickDias) more as "A genuine hero, the best guy/gal around, above reproach, a sincere and devoted champion of what is right". Which is why I'm genuinely perturbed by the idea of "Paladins of various alignments" since I don't see most of those as "Paladins". Cabbage: What you've described is a personality, not a playstyle. The current PF Paladin locks people out of a broad playstyle because they don't have the specific personality. Also, while I'm busy being angry: HWalsh, earlier you mentioned Paizo losing a customer (presumably you) if they don't Respect Tradition. Let me respond to this: For every book you don't buy, I'll buy two and encourage friends to pick up a copy too. I'm provoked enough at this point to be a very spiteful customer.
First off, your earlier talk about how changing Paladin alignments was akin to putting a rap singer into Lord of the Rings was very out of line. That's a strawman at best, and I could probably make far more harsh comparisons. That said, to get to what you said here: The lore locked me out of some character concepts that by all rights ought to work. I was looking for a Charisma driven melee character with a bit of healing and buffing. So, I went through all the options I could find. Here's what I found, and the results weren't very good: Warpriest doesn't do this. It's Wis-driven. Cleric doesn't do this. It's Wis-driven. Gray Paladin doesn't do this. It sucks. It loses most of the fun things a Paladin gets. Nobody wants to play "A Paladin but sucky and bad and boring." Bard's got the balance wrong for what I wanted to do (it's a fun class, just didn't fit my concept). It's Cha-driven but places too much weight on buffing and not enough on martial stuff. Bloodrager is Cha-driven but doesn't have much buffing or healing. It's more like a melee-heavy derivative of the Magus. Cavalier is a Cha enabled class but is needlessly convouluted and lacks healing. Inquisitor is Wis-driven. Oracle comes close, but the Curses encourage all sorts of bizarre min-maxing to try to find penalties that aren't too crippling. Shaman's not martial enough for this idea. Skald likewise comes up a bit short for this idea; too supporty and just a bit short of being martial enough as a result. Paladin offers the exact blend of features I wanted, but is locked behind a specific alignment. The blend is not obscure; it's tweaking the 'martial versus support' formula offered by Clerics and Bards to reduce the support/healing (but still maintain it), make the character driven by strong personality (Cha) aspects, and favors martial aspects more. It's not something extremely niche and narrow in focus that needs to be alignment specific like some lore-based PRCs. It's a broad, highly desired playstyle. I'm to understand that decisions made decades ago mean I need to just miss out on a pretty broad playstyle because of an Alignment mismatch for the character personalities I'm interested in? And that wanting to change this is like putting a rap singer in Tolkien's works? That's not very fair. In fact, it's insulting. This is a very real gap in the game's design and something should be done about it. It's also a lore gap. I'm to somehow believe that only Lawful Good can produce people with feelings strong enough to pursue a path of 'mostly martial, but with some healing and limited buffing mixed in, driven by a strong belief in their ideals'? No. That's absurd. It basically says only Lawful Good really cares about their ideals, in effect. I can't support that.
I'd love to hear from Paizo staff, in brief (I understand you're very busy, so a simple "yes, do-able!" suffices) about whether PF2E on day 1 supports/will support character concepts such as... Bard specializing in helping others defeat Evil creatures such as demons/devils: The Argent Dramaturge PRC from PF1E is a fine example of this; they're not very 'badass' on their own, but they can do very... 'high culture' things like literally sing at evil to hinder it and help other people overcome it. Doable? Magus equivalent: Do-able from first level? You've mentioned some equivalent ideas, but I'm unclear on the details. I'm not talking about a lot of multiclassing; I mean 'from the start on the character's first session' they can go out and hit things with a sword or with a blast spell like Magic Missile. Is that what you've accomplished in internal playtests? Holy-themed blaster Sorcerer: Mark touched on this briefly, but I just want to be sure... we're talking about someone with obviously Good-themed magic, as an arcane style caster, ideally a spontaneous caster (e.g. this is 'part of who they are' rather than something studied), who can do magical long-range damage. Ideally with a way to do it non-lethally so they have their option of killing foes or not. Do-able as a day 1 thing? If these sort of things are supported, I'll enthusiastically support the game. Already set aside money for the playtest set, but I want to be sure the ideas I spent a lot of time refining to ensure they fit the game mechanics, what I want to play, and match up with Golarion lore can basically carry over. They need not be 1:1 copies in terms of play mechanics, but I want the general style to still be there. I've spent many, many hours across many months fine-tuning these character ideas and don't want them to go to waste in the new edition.
I do not want paladins of any alignment other than Lawful Good, full stop. I would rather see the Paladin class cease to exist than to open it up to all alignments. Then we need classes that play very, very similarly to the Paladin but are open to the other alignments. They have certain play mechanics that are a lot of fun, but constrain the player by concept. Someone else (not you, I believe) was saying we 'owe it to Gygax' to keep the Paladin in a classical style. I fail to see why. Simply because he originated an idea does not mean it cannot evolve without him. It should evolve. Paladins and Monks really ought to lose their alignment restrictions so their play-styles can be opened up to more character concepts. If 'tradition' requires that we do not (and this is, frankly, ridiculous) then the designers would be well served to offer us extremely close equivalents.
I'm not sure if this is where you want to go with it, but the Unchained Rogue can add Dex to damage on some of the weapons you're discussing. Might be worth taking a few levels?
The benchmark post is useful, so I'll "+1" it. That said, know when good enough is good enough. You definitely want an effective character so your party isn't dragged down by them, but you also want fun things to do outside of fighting and need to be sure others can get their shots in during fights too. I've seen people create characters that can solo adventures, and they do it... and it's simply not fun. It's a waste of the GM's time, and everyone else's time. Still, doing good damage is fair enough; that's part of your fun so long as you know where the line is drawn.
Well, the spell list was just a 'what I generally envision doing'. As for the Familiar, PFS does not let Silvanshee Agathions use wands. So, I did a complete rebuild based on all of your advice. What do you think of the following? I believe it's more focused while still including some flavor items I like. That said, I welcome any further advice; I think this is really close to being a great character! Stats - 20 Point buy, PFS legality required:
Traits:
Feats:
Arcana Selections:
Basic equipment:
Default Spells (presumes no foreknowledge of situation): Note this does not account for Spell Recall use since later levels regain it, nor does it account for Pearls of Power (which I will be using!) L0: Brand, Dancing Lights, Detect Magic, Prestidigitation, Read Magic L1: 1x Frostbite, 1x Grease, 1x Magic Missile, 2x Intensified Shocking Grasp, 1x Vanish.
L2: 2x Intensified Burst of Radiance, 1x Glitterdust, 2x Mirror Image.
L3: 1x Conjure Carriage (will be Extended via Rod), 1x Fireball, 1x Force Punch or Vampiric Touch, 2x Heroism (will be Extended via Rod)
L4: 1x Dimensional Door, 1x Dragon's Breath, 1x Shield of the Dawnflower I think I'm good to go now, what do you guys think? Thanks again for all your great ideas; sorry I was so slow to come around to some of them, but you had good evidence and I think this is a stronger charachter that still has fun flavor items (Healing Hex and the Familiar). If you see any room for improvement though, please let me know!
Hrm. Heroism lasting that long (I intended to get a Rod for it, yes indeed!) could mean I have another possible solution: Just prep it twice. I'd have to drop Conjure Carriage for this, but it would cover 3.67 hours per casting... between two of them I should have most of the day covered. The persistent +2 to Attack, Saves, and Skills would be compelling indeed. What do you think of this modified preparation list? It accounts for the defensive concerns Bard 1: Spells omitted for brevity Magus (Hexcrafter) 10, Caster Level 11 due to Magical Knack Trait: 1: 1x Frostbite, 2x Magic Missile, 2x Intensified Shocking Grasp (via Trait lowering metamagic cost), 1x Vanish. At-Will Feather Fall (Self-Only) via Flight Hex.
2: 1x Burst of Radiance (via Spell Blending), 1x Glitterdust, 2x Mirror Image, 1x Scorching Ray. 1x Levitate (self-only, via Flight hex). At-Will Cure Moderate Wounds (Once per target per day, via Healing Hex). 3: 1x Intensified Burst of Radiance (Spell Blending), 1x Fireball, 2x Heroism. Fly via Flight Hex for Caster Level Minutes per day, in 1 minute increments, self-only. 4: 1x Shield of the Dawnflower, 1x Wall of Ice.
My sole concern is the lack of Conjure Carriage, a spell I've become increasingly fond of as of late. I'd LIKE to drop a Heroism for keeping Conjure Carriage in there, but am unsure if this really works out okay given how much my character needs Heroism benefits. Thoughts? I think I'm really, really close to having my build truly good to go and this is one of the last few hangups. |
