Roadie's page

Just to be clear--as someone who's not an expert on this stuff and hasn't been following along--what about the new license would prevent Foundry if not for Foundry's partner status? Is it the fact that it's not sold on Pathfinder Infinite? What does that mean, practically speaking? Could a version of "the next Foundry" simply be released via Infinite, or is that not tenable?

It's deeply untenable because PFI isn't made for software distribution. As soon as you want things like automatic updates or being able to select addons from inside the app (which are at this point just basic requirements most people expect out of software) you need an actual software distribution channel.

Could you could build a guardian who never attacks?

Pure 100% tanking and taking hits, and still be viable.

I doubt it. The class just doesn't have enough health and damage mitigation to actually focus entirely on taking hits, so if you build entirely around things like Taunt, Shielded Attrition, Area Cover, and Intercept Strike/Intercept Foe/Quick Intercept, you'll go down extremely fast and end up contributing very little to the combat.

Taunt sucks, but that's because its mechanics are deeply underwhelming, not because it "doesn't make sense". It makes plenty of sense as an attempt to distract the attention of a given creature from one's allies (no mind control or "pbbbt neener neener" needed), and you check out literally any high-skill basketball or hockey game for obvious examples. Don't get hung up on the name and think it can only be your extremely specific conception of what characters are actually doing.

Instead of Taunt, why not have some ability that let the Guardian designate a ward to protect, and then if the ward is attacked, the Guardian can use their reaction to stride adjacent to their ward, and take the attack instead of the ward. This could be augmented as they level, or via class feats so that they can also strike the attacker, or push the ward to a different space.

So, Intercept Foe and Intercept Strike, and the combination of both if you take Quick Intercept? It's also mechanically underwhelming (too much feat investment, too small of a range, you don't have enough damage mitigation to make it really useful), but the base mechanics literally already exist in there.

I think a simple first step here would be to dump all the weakness stuff all together, and give the class a bane-type ability instead, similar to the bane ability that 1e's inquisitor gets. In one fell swoop all the nonsensical gameplay issues with Find Weakness go away, and the class instantly feels more like an actually Charisma-based concept because you're inflicting something rather than "finding" weaknesses.

I think the issue is it just needed a bit more description. It seems like a bit more limited version of resplendant mansion. Its foot print is 300 feet on a side but can be multiple stories tall. Given the description of the thaumaturge version part of what they can claim is a 200 square foot piece of property. So we know the foot print of this is 200 square feet but that does not indicate that the interior volume is limited to that. It could like the resplendent mansion be multiple stories tall.

I think for the full release this does need some work like some portal that you can use to get back to it or it needs to be movable earlier. Possibly add another tier first tier like level 4 or 6 gives you a cabin basically level 12 it upgrades to a tower and 20 it upgrades to a full on mansion.

Or keep it small but have it larger on the interior than its exterior size would indicate. A 200 foot cabin is not a demense.

"200 square feet" is not the same thing as "200 feet on a side". A resplendent mansion, at 300 feet on a side, is 90,000 square feet per floor.

Ok, but put it in Brooklyn and you can charge $3k a month

You'll have to train up Landlord Lore to Earn Income from it, though.

First and most obvious: it's a 200-square-foot building or property... so, it's a shed. I mean that literally: 10 ft by 20 ft is one of the standard sizes for a backyard shed. Put a couch, a table, and a cot in there and you've already filled the place up; you might need to rearrange the furniture if you want to give your party enough places to actually sit.

Second, it's statically placed. Great, cool—so that makes it basically useless in the vast majority of campaigns. What's the value of spending a class feat on a cool hangout that's the size of a shed and that can be mostly replicated through rituals? By the time you can spend a second class feat on it at level 20 (out of eleven total, just to make this one shed do something useful), the wizard in the party has been casting magnificent mansion since level 13, and the only downside in the comparison is that when you stay in the mansion you have to take some time to dump all your stuff back into bags of holding when you leave.

Many of us already deeply dislike the preponderance of secret checks and the critical failure effect of Recall Knowledge (and extra burden that both issues put on GMs). Automatically getting Dubious Knowledge exacerbates both issues (not to mention it immediately being self-contradictory because you need to know the real result to know whether you can use Esoteric Antithesis), and it really makes me feel like Paizo hasn't bothered to look at the complaints that people have already had about this stuff.

Personally, I feel like the best approach here would be to ditch the whole weakness-causing thing entirely and replace it with something that gives a damage bonus against a specific creature trait, in the style of the bane rune (but with a broader choice of traits). Or, in other words, basically take the bane ability from 1e's inquisitor and stick it on Thaumaturge. Same end result in the generic case (assuming the amount of bonus damage is balanced correctly), less janky against enemies that already have weaknesses, and better encourages actually targeting weaknesses instead of sidestepping them.

Roadie wrote:

I feel like there's another really strong argument for this class being Wis- or Int-based instead: the Trick Magic Item feat. This is the strongest existing precedent for making broad use of magic items without being a spellcaster... and what's it based on? Intelligence (Arcana or Occult) or Wisdom (Nature or Religion).

Use Magic Device was CHA-based in PF1.

So? Trick Magic Item is the de facto replacement for UMD in 2e, and it's dependent on Wis- and Int-based skill checks.

I feel like there's another really strong argument for this class being Wis- or Int-based instead: the Trick Magic Item feat. This is the strongest existing precedent for making broad use of magic items without being a spellcaster... and what's it based on? Intelligence (Arcana or Occult) or Wisdom (Nature or Religion).

For me there's two basic problems with Starfinder as-is:

- Low level to mid level personal combat is boring, because of the basic way character progression is designed (you get all of one, maybe two things you can actually do well, so combat at levels 1-4 is just doing those over and over every turn, and mid level combat can have the same problem depending on the obviously optimal selections for a given class).

- Low level starship combat is boring, for the same reason (pilot stunts, engineer diverts power to shields, everyone else shoots, repeat every turn).

Also, operatives are the just plain best class for most purposes (most damage, biggest numbers for everything, best class ability selections), but still manage to be really boring at low levels because you're just using the same trick attack every round.

Fundamentally fixing these problems would take a fairly deep redesign of how character progression works to better reflect something like the PF 2e model, where most "big numbers" options just don't exist and the game actively hands you several things to do per combat right away.

So... any news on actually getting these changes into the errata page? It's about to roll over into September and there's still no good source of before-and-after changes.

the supposed benefit is they have reduced overhead from developing for linux, windows and mac versions and instead everything is run from a server and displayed via html so they only need 1 version of the software for all devices.

there's really no consumer benefit, and they're unlikely to do an offline model unless they completely abandon the current model as they would gain nothing if they also had an offline system.

The consumer benefit, at least nominally, is the stuff you already named: the same web app now runs on all platforms, instead of needing to adapt the system to multiple platforms as native apps (like how they never released an Android app, probably because the iOS one sucked up all the time effort available to work on mobile stuff). I've worked on phone apps, and even simple ones can eat up a ton of time and duplicated effort if you're trying to keep functionality in sync across multiple platforms, so I'm not at all surprised that they'd want to move away from that.

The problem here isn't really the subscription stuff, IMO, but that whatever server setup they're using has just enough lag in making changes that it just doesn't feel good to use. There are contrasting examples in many online-only shared wiki apps (for example, Notion), which have editing that feels real time enough that you don't notice it, even though it's also live updating for any other users looking at the same page.

If they could fix that, I feel like a lot of other complaints might vanish because it would then feel 'good enough' to make a daily driver despite the other shortcomings of a web app.

I don't see the problem with Craft being a make-anything skill, because the kinds of characters who are built as PCs and given full access to Craft anything by the GM are the kinds of characters who can make anything anyway. A level 10 PC with master or legendary rank in Craft isn't a historical artisan, he's a medieval-aesthetic Tony Stark.

Hero points allow all characters to reroll d20s. The problem is, many skill uses have the secret trait, so you never actually see your skill roll to know if you should reroll it. Hide and Sneak are probably the most prominent of these, since they'll be happening regularly for ranger and rogue characters. Is it intended that these skill uses just can't benefit from hero points?

They said combat maneuvers are still in, and supposedly decent at all levels. Kinda wanna see this to see what the Fighter will really be capable of, since I figure he'll be the best at them.

I can't trust this estimation until I see the spell list, because if they repeat stuff from PF1 then wizards will get just-as-good combat maneuvers with no investment as soon as spells like Black Tentacles are available.

The info available so far sounds less than appealing to me. The closest thing to filling any of the many, many gaps existing fighters have is the mention of Debilitating Shot, and that still doesn't seriously help unless there are a ton of 3-action spells.

Where's the ability to smash stuff and thereby create difficult terrain for enemies? Where's the ability to interrupt movement over a large area so the fighter can actually bodyguard the wizard? Where's the ability to force enemy movement? Where's literally anything that actually helps the fighter do anything beyond "attack and deal and damage"?

To me, the oozemorph feels totally backwards. It should give you gradually better abilities to be an ooze, not gradually better abilities to NOT be an ooze.

If it's not too strenuous can somebody let me know what archetypes/talents the Rogue has been given?

Rogue archetypes:

- Desert raider: lose trapfinding, trap sense, and one talent; gain immunity to dazzled, the ability to hide in plain sight in bright light as a -5 penalty (but not against creatures immune to blinded/dazzled), and a Perception bonus to avoid being surprised. Extremely useful with the right party composition (e.g. a caster with lots of light spells), but ONLY with the right party composition, unless all your adventuring happens at high noon.

- River rat: lose trapfinding and trap sense; gain a bonus on Swim checks, ignore difficult terrain caused by "light undergrowth and shallow bogs", and gain a bonus on saves vs disease and poison. Incredibly campaign-dependent. How many people actually run campaigns in a swamp? How often does disease actually matter beyond one encounter at a time?

- Sly saboteur: Lose trap sense, uncanny dodge, and improved uncanny dodge; gain increasing amount of normal movements in difficult terrain (including 5-foot steps), and the ability to rig mundane devices to fail and deal sneak attack damage, and to rig magic items to fail as extremely complex mundane devices and deal untyped magic sneak attack damage. The difficult terrain part is handy, but the rest seems overcomplicated and useless, since you're basically rigging up traps that aren't even as good as normal (borderline useless) traps.

- Sylvan trickster: Lose trapfinding, uncanny dodge, and improved uncanny dodge; gain wild empathy, the ability to pick witch hexes instead of rogue talents (including major hexes eventually!), resist nature's lure, and DR/cold iron. Seems extremely good to me, nearly on the level of a must-have unless you're in a game where trapfinding is actually important, especially since the witch hexes in the same book include one that's a Fort save or all special sight senses are disabled for 1 minute (darkvision, see in darkness, etc), and since the Animal Skin major hex (beast shape II at will) is huge amounts of utility for a rogue at high levels.

Unfortunately, the final result is that the shifter is like the Feral archetype for Hunter, except worse in almost every way. Minor aspects are like animal focus, except you have to pick them in advance and they have a time limit per day, and the wild shape is more limited and not as good as normal druid wild shape.

Stuff the shifter gets that the feral hunter doesn't get:
- Two claws that get up to 1d8/x3, and you can replace the base damage of two natural attacks in wild shape with them
- The ability to use multiple minor aspects at once
- The monk AC bonus
- Another +5 BAB
- Trackless step

Stuff the feral hunter gets that the shifter doesn't get:
- No time limit on animal focus
- The ability to pick which animal focus to use each time it's used, rather than being set in advance
- Wild shape up to Huge size and beast shape III
- Wild shaping into any animal type
- 6th-level spells

Seeing the backlash, I was first worried its another case of "devs avoid really hard making new class op, so people will complain about it being underwhelming" like people complained with vigilante, but it seems like its more of "people expected shifter to be able to change into more than few animals" kind of deal? That doesn't sound that bad.

The problem is that the set of options you get is just so tiny. It's a class supposedly based around shapeshifting, but for most campaigns you'll only ever get to turn into three or maybe four different things in total, and the class totally lacks any access to scaling secondary abilities that even plain old monk or fighter gets (ki powers, advanced weapon training).

Compare to, for example, a beastmorph vivisectionist alchemist. The alchemist gets to turn into lots of different man-beasts via mutagen AND has access to a bunch of self-polymorph extracts (including beast shape I through IV), and even when the alchemist can't publicly turn into stuff for social reasons he can still contribute with other extracts and with sneak attack. The only thing the alchemist doesn't have an easy thematic equivalent to is hour/level duration polymorphs... and even then the beastmorph mutagen eventually gets to an hour-plus duration.

Or for another comparison with a focus on a single animal identity, consider agathiel vigilante: you get to turn into an animal at will with no X/day or duration limits, you get your pick of abilities from beast shape I-IV spells, and you still get 10 social talents and 5 vigilante talents and vigilante specialization.

Roadie wrote:

The ranger doesn't get the hour/level of wild shape, but otherwise is roundly better off, and is actually better at shapeshifting into random things than the shifter because of spell access.

Basically someone got extreme of tunnelvision and no external feedback so we ended up with some weird class that's very unflexible. What's even more damning is the presence of additional shape changing spells. Why couldn't the Shifter be the class that can turn into just about anything as it's whole deal?

What I'd have really liked to see would be something like a druid with the casting and animal companion removed, but wild shape broadly expanded with the ability to emulate lots of different polymorph effects, including weird stuff like Cloud Shape, spells that divine casters normally don't get like Monstrous Physique, utility powers like "turn into a Tiny animal and get a free Nondetection effect along with it", etc.

To me, the Shifter feels like half a class: as in, somebody forgot to add the other half of the class features.

A 20th-level shifter has:
- Track
- wild empathy
- woodland stride
- 1d8/x3 claw attacks that ignore most DR
- the Monk AC bonus
- trackless step
- 5 aspects, with minor forms she can use for 23 minutes a day
- Wild shape 8/day, only as beast shape II, with extra benefits from her major forms but limited to only those five

Compare to a 20th-level shapeshifter ranger:
- Track
- wild empathy
- woodland stride
- evasion and improved evasion
- swift tracker and improved quarry
- hide in plain sight
- hunter's bond (an animal companion or granting buffs to allies)
- 5 natural weapon combat style feats (which can grant claws and ignoring some DR with claws)
- shifter's blessing 4/day, chosen from 3 forms, which can act as beast shape IV
- 5 favored enemy types, up to +10
- spells up to 4th level, which include various polymorph effects with freely-chooseable benefits (for example, greater animal aspect)

The ranger doesn't get the hour/level of wild shape, but otherwise is roundly better off, and is actually better at shapeshifting into random things than the shifter because of spell access.

To me, overall, the Solarian suffers from the same basic issues that monk does:

- for some reason, the writers keep overvaluing being able to do equipment-related things without equipment, and

- for some reason, the writers keep overvaluing at-will abilities, even when they're weaker than what level-comparable equipment can do.

Archery is still the most powerful combat style in the game. This isn't even a nerf, as most archers at a level where this would be relevant have clustered shots anyway.

Then why even have it, though? It's an absurdly over-fiddly thing that's irrelevant in the vast majority of cases anyway.

I am tremendously underwhelmed by most of the archetypes, and even more by how blatantly out of whack they are as compared to each other.

For example, there's the Metamorph Alchemist, which gives up bombs and extracts completely for a limited set of self-polymorph spells X/day, starting with just alter self. Then compare that to skinshaper druid, which trades wild shape for a scaling alter self X/day ability... and still gets full spellcasting and animal companion.

Even the much-hyped vigilante archetypes dip into terribleness all over, like how the brute vigilante gets pretty much all negatives from their transformation (Large size but no ability score increase, rage-like penalties but no buffs, you have spend a talent just to make armor fit you) and has to make a Will save every single time they use their vigilante identity or attack their allies.

I don't know, it is probably just me, but again... a customisable weapon may not be worth a class's main ability in some people's minds.

Giving out 4 weapons is plain out overpowered, even at 2 blade-skills above and beyond the normal. It makes wealth by level a joke and puts crafting feats feats to shame.

A 3+ armed soulblade should probably be an archetype that doesn't play well with most others quite frankly.

I personally see nothing overpowered about it. It does mean that a multi-armed soulknife will spend less on weaponry than, say, a multi-armed psychic warrior... but the soulknife is going to be using that extra cash anyway to cover for all the stuff that he just can't do, while the psychic warrior can pick up offensive precognition to enhance the attacks of all his weapons at once and then still has 19 other powers he can take.

If I was going to revise the Kineticist, my first step would be to remove "burn", gather power, infusion specialization, internal buffer, etc as a central mechanic. I'd replace it with a "you can use X points of powers per round, and increase X by 1 for the round by taking 10 points of nonlethal damage" mechanic.

It'd take some tuning, but I think it could be made to play almost exactly the same, and it'd be way less fiddly. It'd also go a long way towards making it feel less like you're being punished just for wanting to use your class abilities.

The change to the scarred witch doctor is really strange to me. Was there somehow some terrifying cabal of overpowered scarred witch doctors that were using their mighty MAD powers to destroy the stability of PFS?

These classes do take features of two existing classes and integrate them into a new cohesive whole. If you're disappointed with the results, playtest a class or two, report back, and tell us how you think the play experience can be improved for them.

The thing people are running into here is that in a number of ways, the classes don't feel cohesive to them as compared to preexisting hybrid classes in Pathfinder.

For example, look at bloodrager, which has the magus spell list but not the spell combat and spellstrike abilities that makes that class feel like it actually mixes up casting and fighting together.

Bloodrager is leaps and bounds beyond attempting to do the same thing using multiclassing and prestige classes, but it doesn't have the little touches like the magus' spellstrike or the 3.5 beguiler's DC-increasing pseudo-sneak attack that feel like they really weld together the different parts of the class on a conceptual and mechanical level. Instead, it feels like, well, a streamlined version of putting the same concept together by multiclassing.

Here's a thought for hunter: combat styles, except that unlike the ranger, they're based around emulation of animal types instead of use of specific weapon combinations. This way, you get some of the wild shape flavor without literal shapechanging, and it can both subsume the teamwork feats and replace the underwhelming animal focus ability.

To emphasize the pet class element, the hunter combat style applies to both the hunter and his companion, and he might have some limited ability to apply bonuses to other party members too.

Some vague possible thoughts here:

* crow: gain Broken Wing Gambit and Swap Places; gain a bonus to Acrobatics; get a bonus to Bluff and Intimidate rolls against any creatures that has wounded a party member in the last day

* dragon: gain Amplified Rage and Wall of Flesh (even if not Small); get a minor rage ability (+2 Str/Con); get a bonus to attack any creature that a party member has wounded in the last day

* rhinoceros: gain Lookout and Tribe Mentality; gain a bonus to natural armor; get a bonus to attacking any creature that has wounded a party member in the last day

* scorpion: gain Paired Opportunists and Seize the Moment; apply a level-based poison to your attacks; get a damage bonus against creatures that you've poisoned

* wolf: gain Outflank and Pack Attack; gain scent within 30 feet; get a bonus to tracking creatures you've wounded in the past day

Googleshng has pretty much covered all my thoughts on it. The class is just too dependent on the other characters already being compatible with the rage thing.

Arcanist doesn't feel much different than Sage bloodline sorcerer, it really doesn't feel unqiue. I'd like to see significant changes in this class. Currently it's just an alternate sorcerer that gives you less than either sorc or wizard. - I want it to look a lot more like Shaman.

The bit you may have missed, at least in terms of mechanics (since Vancian casting is so arbitrary that there's almost no thematic change), is that the class works like a sorcerer that can change spells known every day.

Bloodrager - Primarily a fighter-type, but you use your rage more intelligently, you can use it to pick up certain spells or feats for the situation. A couple of these bloodlines look very interesting, overall I think the class achieves a combat focused hybrid (like paladin) very well.

Having full BAB and Mighty Rage along with spellcasting makes me wonder how many players would use this as a more complex but more potentially powerful drop-in replacement for the normal barbarian.

Also, take a look at the Arcane bloodline. Free blur and haste while raging? Yes, please!

Brawler - Honestly, it doesn't look that interesting. It's trying to be a full BAB monk, but really doesn't do that well. Hopefully we as playtesters can make some of these abilities really interesting

The sad part is that in terms of fitting into the rest of the system, it's a better monk than monk. Can actually use armor with brawling enchantment, gets free special attack types without having to deal with ki points, can spontaneously get an entire feat tree in the middle of a fight by spending an action (and gets enough martial bonus feats to cover the necessities in the first place), etc.

Hunter - "The" Animal companion class. it does this very well, I like it. I have to see this one in action to say a lot more. It really does interesting things with the animal companion.

I like the pet thing... but animal focus X/day feels like an annoyingly fiddly thing to keep track of. I'd rather see the class given access to a limited list of talents, of which it can only know a few but have a "until you switch to a different one" duration.

Also, there should really be some kind of way to give allies teamwork feat benefits.

Investigator - I'm really happy with this class. It's the ultimate skillmaster, it can even inspire itself! as a combat role it's a little more nebulous. So far I really like what i see, however.

This class looks to me like a better drop-in replacement for rogue in many, many cases. Same sneak attack, almost as many talents, 6+Int but inspiration talents can give you +1d6 to a bunch of skills all the time, and then on top of that the class gets extract.

Shaman - I love this class, everything the arcanist should be. Feels unique and interesting, beautifully mends elements of both oracle and witch, and really blends them together into something that feels unique.

I wish they just hadn't named the class feature "hex". Witch hexes aren't the same thing!

Skald - Giving rage powers to those who can use them better. This is very interesting. My initial thoughts are positive, something I'll have to try a bunch of different paths with.

This class seems interesting to me but quite possibly a lot clumsier in play than on paper, because allies who are benefiting from rage can't cast spells or the like. If you have a party with fighter/cleric/rogue/wizard, that's two out of four who will be refusing the rage benefit; make it magus/warpriest/investigator/arcanist and that's nobody who will actually want to rage.

Slayer - a Lot of people want to play rogue's for the sneak attack and/or killing of things side. This is the class for them, it blends those elements really well, and makes a legitimate fighter. you trade slower sneak attack for better atk bonus and special rules. Feels like an excellent class..

This is my favorite of the bunch; it blends elements of both fighty types and the rogue without being obviously better to me than one or the other.

What it's missing is parkour talents, because otherwise it would be excellent for pretty much any Assassin's Creed character (complete with thematic compatibility with going "f$@@ it" and just murdering everybody in sight when stealth fails).

Swashbuckler - I LOVE IT. The flavor of gunslinger showmanship, coupled with a good parry ability. This is amazing. It's hard to speak to it from a power perspective, as it's very unique, but certainly is a fun and interesting class.

The class looks interesting, though the way the deeds are clustered together at specific levels feels odd. The table would look less empty if they were spread out a little.

The main objection I have, though, is "why isn't this a fighter archetype?". The skeleton of the fighter class (including bravery and bonus feats) shines through enough that I could easily picture this as an archetype writeup instead.

Warpriest - Interesting blend of cleric and fighter. You trade spellcasting for a lot of combat useable "pseudo spells" being able to augment your armor or weapon to suit your needs is very powerful, also the domains are very cool, and add a lot of flavor to the class. This is a pretty great way to go about things if you want to play a holy man, and still get up in there.

This looks to me like a drop-in replacement for paladin in many cases. It's more flavorful, better fitting for many deities, and, with channel energy and 6th level spells, more capable in the long run.