RootOfAllThings's page

Triggering Reactive Strike is such a boost to your DPR that any self-respecting Fighter is trying his hardest to get that free MAP-less Strike every round. On the other hand, Rogues also practically get it for free; Opportune Backstab is absurdly good and likewise has no usage limitation. Both Rogues and Fighters also have built-in amps that are far better than the Guardian's.

And if its still too good, you can always slap the "make that strike at a -2 penalty" from Double Shot and various other feats on it.

Actually progressing towards the end of the encounter and not just soaking damage would go a long way towards making the Guardian feel less passive; he baits the attack not just because him losing HP is somehow better than someone else losing HP (this is sometimes true but not always), but because baiting the attack opens up a juicy MAP-less Strike.

My longstanding lukewarm take is that Fighter long ago ended up with too much of the mechanical/thematic pie by sheer virtue of being "good at fighting" in a system in which ones choice of fighting style is really what defines a class. All classes must be "good at fighting" but one class happens to be the goodest at fighting as their theme. Swashbuckler and Investigator are shoddy Rogues/Fighters/etc. because Rogue got to the "light, evasive melee with precision damage" and "nonmagical skill/plot monkey" pies first. Likewise, Fighter stuck its hands in almost all the mundane fighting pies: they make great duelists, large weapon users, defenders, archers and throwers, and are an archetype away from being unarmed fighters as well. Unless wants to really lean into "nature warrior" or "divine warrior", Fighters encroach on the mechanical space of Rangers and Champions. "Guardian could be a Fighter with an archetype" is just the latest example of Fighter being too broad of a base mechanically; you have to have a pretty non-mundane theme to survive Fighterization; naked kungfu warrior, magic anime warrior, and semi-magical pile of junk warrior all ended up pretty unique.

The nature of splats and TTRPG publishing means that you can really only add, not take away; the ship on Fighter has long sailed. But if I had my way, I'd do the reverse of this thread: dismantle the Fighter and distribute its parts amongst the other martials. Of course, that just moves the Guardian from the Fighter's shadow to the Champion's, but maybe in that hypothetical we'd sharpen the Champion as "divine warrior" and not necessarily "defensive warrior."

Thoughts from a casual read.

>Armor specialization is in my opinion mathematically poor. Resistance is great at strongest when you're taking lots of small hits, like persistent damage. Unfortunately, you need blanket physical resistance for Bleed. The bulk of most enemies damage is going to be BPS (barring elementals and other "magical" enemies), which means that resistance is weaker than say, a permanent +1 to AC or an accelerated AC track, by which I mean Fighter weapon proficiency, armor edition.

>Intercept Strike reads like a poor man's Retributive Strike. It's also immediate antisynergy with your own armor specialization resistance. You're a melee, so you're most likely standing next to another melee combatant, who probably has comparable HP to you, so who is taking the damage feels less consequential than reducing the total damage. So I'd rather have Retributive Strike for the increased range and the possibility of a free strike, even from an amp-less martial.

>Taunt has been discussed to death in this thread. I'll echo the others in saying that turning off one class feature (accelerated AC track) to turn on another feels bad. I think there's a pick two here: debuffs enemies, debuffs myself, or doesn't require a roll. I'm in general not fond of post-APG "70% chance to have a core class feature on any given turn", and this is more of that trend. A non-[Mental] Will save is unusual for the system, but nice to see. Lead those zombies around like a conductor.

>Threat Technique doesn't inspire me. Ferocious Vengeance is an attempt at making a damage amp that the class doesn't need, and the math on Mitigate Harm is confusingly written. I'd rather have just one feature here, and I'd suggest the Fortification rune "turn crits into regular hits".

>Tough to Kill actively made me scowl. There are few enough good General Feats; handing one out for free is an incredibly bland "feature." Fighter's Battlefield Surveyor doesn't just hand out Incredible Initiative!

>Delayed offensive proficiency is lame. Lacking a real amp is good enough to mark them as a "defensive" martial, they don't need have their accuracy kneecapped at the levels where everyone else is popping off (weapon expertise, reactive strike, 3rd tier spells, etc.) Just put them on the standard martial track and don't give them an amp, and they'll be just as offensively scary as Champions (i.e. not terribly).

>Greater Armor Specialization is cool to read but I still have doubts about its math.

>Larger than Life is a cool feat.

>I have mixed feelings about Shoulder Check. It's a neat feat, but feels oddly selfish for the Guardian. It compares poorly with Snagging Strike, which has both better utility for the team and is on a class that more actively wants to be making strikes because it actually has an amp.

>Unkind Shove is more support for one of the two bad maneuvers, which is... well, its something.

>Armor Break explains how the Broken condition interacts with Bulwark... is that a general rule, or specific to armor broken in this way? In either case, 2d6 damage is not worth -2/-3 AC for the rest of combat, unless you're facing one of the rare monsters that is already attempting to break your armor.

>Intercept Foe is a compelling choice against Intercept Strike, although I'd like it if it didn't require a melee Strike to trigger.

>I was about to lambast Disarming Intercept for being support for the worst maneuver, but at least its a free action. Comes at a competitive level, though, which means it is doomed to obscurity once more.

>Energetic Specialization would be more compelling if it came either earlier (like 2nd or 4th) or you got to pick two elements, or you could change the element without fully retraining the feat. As is, it comes too late, shares a competitive feat level, and offers too little relative to a 6th level magical item.

>Stomp Ground is fun, but a non-discriminating emanation feels antisynergistic for a class that actively wants to stand next to allies.

>Mobile Protection/Group Taunt/et al. start to make me feel like I'm rebuying things that should just be part of my class progression, Alchemist style. Not a fan.

>Quick Intercept should work with Intercept Foe.

>Shield Salvation implies that repairing my gear is part of my daily preparations, and that I can repair my shield to full HP and it won't be "thoroughly" repaired. This feels strange to me.

>Sure-footed uses the rules-bearing word "off-balance" in its flavor text and then doesn't actually involve the condition "Off-balance." While the combo with Enlarge is fun, I think this would be more fun if it actually helped against Off-balance; maybe "The circumstance penalty to your AC from being clumsy or off-balance is reduced by 1."

>Armored Counterattack needs to come faaaar earlier and really not be an encounter power; see my earlier comments about Retributive Strike. Also has weird endless duration issues waiting for "the next strike made against them."

>Right Where You Want is... more shove support. This could be a skill feat.

>Blanket Defense wants me to have multiple reactions for Shield Block that the class has no way of accessing.

>Bloody Denial is a poor man's reenactment of Laughing Fit, subject to your usually terrible class DC against the most common best save (and an attack roll, so its doubly dice'd).

>I'd Never! strike an ally while being confused, but I will trip them continuously with Stomp Ground. By accident, I swear.

>Oh hey I was prescient with Perfect Protection here. 50% to nullify critical hits feels juicy.

>Boundless Reprisals gives me the reactions I need for Blanket Defense to sort of work... at 20th level. It's a fun capstone, but hard to evaluate their usefulness because they come so very very late.

My overall opinion is "interesting, but probably not very compelling in play." The perceived pattern of drawing "aggro" is highly passive and usually only serves to redistribute damage from my allies to myself. But other classes advance defensive play by reducing total incoming damage, usually by wasting actions and applying penalties to enemies. Oh, and killing them, because death is the best crowd control. The Guardian seems like it spends a lot of actions faffing about and taking damage and not actually ending encounters, actually increasing the damage taken overall. They desperately need to build a Catch-22 into their routine before Armored Counterattack; the Paladin-Champion or the Champion Dedication Fighter is doing this at 6th level, every round, forever (attack me, get Shield Blocked. walk away, get Reactive Strike'd. hit an ally, get Retributive Strike'd.)

The restriction on concentrate actions sort of makes sense as a legacy restriction against spellcasting, perhaps also Recalling Knowledge, but ends up meaning the Barb can't Demoralize without a feat, which is a bit silly. It also means a Barb can't do something like Hunt Prey, which would otherwise be thematically appropriate.

It also locks the Barbarian out of 90% of active/reactive magic item use. Both envision and command are concentrate-tagged, and a surprising number of runes weapons, and wearable items have one of them. 108 of the 154 talismans are Envision, and 19 are Command. Magic items are already bad enough that there's not much incentive to use them (low DCs, awkward handedness, bad action economy), so its not like a barbarian is really expected to give up their class feature to use them, but it still feels bad to look at all the toys you can't even begin to fit into your combat routine. Preventing spellcasting barbarians is one thing, but it seems wrong for them to be cut off from a good chunk of one of 2e's axes of character progression.

Has a large number of reactions to further boost the damage of both you and your spotter.

This does also raise another problem with crossbows (and loading weapons in general): you usually need twice as many reaction options as anyone else, because half of them get disabled by not having a loaded weapon. 3.5 of Sniping Duo's four reactions (Exploit Opening, Deflecting Shot, Redirecting Shot, and half of Tag Team) suffer from this. If you're trying to Strike as often as you can, you're ending some fraction of your rounds unloaded.

I'm sure in optimal situations it shakes out mostly okay, but it can be frustrating to contort your action economy for only marginal gains over straightforward "Debilitating Shot, then Strike until the enemy is dead."

...giving it an innately better Critical Specialization is nice (especially since the 'pin' specialization is pretty terrible as it is).

I disagree here. Immobilized is a pretty useful condition, so bow's critical specialization is almost always a wasted action on the enemy's part, even if they could pass the check with their eyes closed. For your melee comrades, it's an Interact to remove, so it provokes Reactive Strike, and stacks with Prone and Grabbed for extra lockdown. Meanwhile, 1d8 to 1d8+3 bleed damage is nice at low levels but doesn't scale well into later levels. It's 25% of the HP of a level 0 creature, but 2.5% of the HP of a level 16 creature.

The pin doesn't effect certain kinds of amorphous foes, but there are plenty of bleed immune enemies too, both RAW (e.g. all elementals and constructs) and ones your GM may conditionally rule immune (such as skeletons).

Overall disappointing. Bad math on "single powerful attacks" strikes again (see Swashbuckler Finishers, most single target blasting spells, Power Attack, etc.). Flurry itself is a pretty bland trait and suffers by comparison to the accuracy-improving elephant in the room, so Precision continuing to be Flurry's less desirable cousin isn't helping Ranger's image.

RootOfAllThings wrote:

Castilliano wrote:

If one had Trash/Collateral Thrash (Barbarian), you could exert more control over the foe and w/o the miss chance. Furious Grab also avoids this miss chance (though could be read elsewise I suppose), as would Constrict (like an Eidelon or monster might do), and those seem more extreme & Attack-like than maintaining.

Funnily enough, my GM ruled in a session earlier today that I'd have to make a flat check to Thrash an invisible creature I had restrained, much to the disagreement of the table. I plan on bringing up that ruling next time an invisible PC gets Constricted, Engulfed, or Grabbed.

While I agree with you that it seems very silly, your GM was sadly going by RAW. Concealed is explicitly called out as an entirely separate effect from your status as Observed/Hidden/Undetected/Unnoticed. Unless you can ignore the creature's Concealed condition, you must make the flat check to target it with any ability. Yes, even if it's restrained. Or you've swallowed it. Silly as it sounds.

If a rule seems to have wording with problematic repercussions or doesn’t work as intended, work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed.

The hidden/concealed flat check rules have long seemed full of holes, along with senses in general. It strikes me as particularly bizarre that say, a Giant Anaconda may have an Invisible creature Grabbed in its jaws, but then fail to swallow it because it... can't see it? Or the same snake have an Invisible creature wrapped in its coils and then fail to Constrict it because it failed a flat check. Similarly one can simply attempt to Hide from a creature that has you Grappled, because the implied sense of Touch doesn't, by RAW, stop or reduce concealment. Does a creature need to make a flat check to even attempt to Escape from an invisible creature, since you must "choose one creature, object, spell effect, hazard, or other impediment imposing any of those conditions on you"?

I know it's bad practice to point at 1e rules as 2e gospel, but there's something to be said for lines like

A grappled creature cannot use Stealth to hide from the creature grappling it, even if a special ability, such as hide in plain sight, would normally allow it to do so. If a grappled creature becomes invisible, through a spell or other ability, it gains a +2 circumstance bonus on its CMD to avoid being grappled, but receives no other benefit.

As an extension of this discussion about Thrash, consider Whirling Throw. I have an Invisible creature grappled, and wish to Whirling Throw it. What happens if I fail my flat check?

And one more question while we're at it, since I'm curious how people would rule this. Is a failed flat check a "miss" for the sake of abilities like Tag Team (Sniping Duo) or Follow Up Strike (Martial Artist)?

If one had Trash/Collateral Thrash (Barbarian), you could exert more control over the foe and w/o the miss chance. Furious Grab also avoids this miss chance (though could be read elsewise I suppose), as would Constrict (like an Eidelon or monster might do), and those seem more extreme & Attack-like than maintaining.

Funnily enough, my GM ruled in a session earlier today that I'd have to make a flat check to Thrash an invisible creature I had restrained, much to the disagreement of the table. I plan on bringing up that ruling next time an invisible PC gets Constricted, Engulfed, or Grabbed.

Second, I lose all my lowest level slots (and their associated spells known in my repertoire).

Where does it say this happens? The Spell Repertoire definition notes

Your spell slots and the spells in your spell repertoire are separate.

First, you gain two new 3rd-level slots. Second, you lose both of your lowest level slots. Third, you add two spells to your repertoire, which may be of up to third level. Fourth, you then forget two spells from your repertoire, which may be of any level.

Perpdepog wrote:

That's funny. I'm the opposite. I like that consumables like scrolls and such matter more for casters in this edition; makes me feel like I have a clearer sink to pour my gold into.

On a slightly related note, I think that wands and staves regaining their abilities each day instead of being non-rechargeable/very slowly rechargeable is partly predicated on the idea that you won't have many base slots, and I like that mechanic a lot.

I understand that opinion, and I get that it actually create a clear "money sink" for casters, just like potency and striking runes are a clear money sink for martials, but it just doesn't "mesh" well with my spellcaster fantasy as I just don't envision my caster as cycling throught wands or scrolls, but they must if I want them to keep casting spells after a few fights.

It's not helped by the fact that fundamental/property runes make martials do their thing better; its impact shows up in every hit and every crit, and you feel noticeably stronger doing your thing. Getting a wand or a staff doesn't make your spells any better, all it does is mitigate the resource issues of casters. They're not top-level slots so their combat applications aren't the best, and you get wider but not any taller, when a key issue with casters is lack of immediate impact, i.e. height.

Proficiency tends to be valued higher than the class features that are supposed to balance it. And when these can be poached by the Fighter it feels doubly worse.

It would also help if the vast majority of martial magic items weren't some variation on "Critical hit, get X," which usually rewards the highest accuracy class of all. Even if the Fighter is doing the same damage as the rest of the Martials (and he isn't), he's getting those sweet sweet bonus effects more often than not, and every book usually gives him something nice, like the Phantasmal Doorknob.

I'd like to see more magic items for the big-hitters and many-swingers, not just the accurate hitters.

Classes with easy access to action compression, like Monks, are marginally better at critting against PC-4 and below, and against PC+2 and above, but only if they're making more strikes than the Fighter on average, and AOO shifts the balance back in the Fighter's favor.

I made this post over on the PF2e subreddit, but figure'd I'd post it here as well to get as broad a discussion as possible.

Thaumaturgist needs Esoteric Antithesis to keep up martial damage, but the need to Recall Knowledge and the weakness mechanic make it actually worst against the kinds of things Thaumaturgist seems intended to interact with.

Esoteric Antithesis requires you to not critically fail on a Recall Knowledge as part of Find Flaws. The strange and bizarre creatures as Thaumaturgist feels most flavorful fighting are Uncommon, Rare, or Unique, which means they have hefty increases to the DC of Recall Knowledge. APs are chock full of unique named foes, who RAW have a whopping +10 their Recall Knowledge DC. The Thaumaturgist doesn't feel very "magical secrets" when they're better fighting Ogres than Hounds of Tindalos.

Since DC also raises with target level, they're doubly penalized trying to "turn on" versus single, PL+X bosses. This is the Swashbuckler problem, where they're actually best mopping up mooks because their features most reliably turn on there. Its even worse for Thaumaturgist, who can't Feint a mook and Finisher the boss.

Esoteric Antithesis gives its damage bonus by granting a weakness, but if that creature already has a weakness, then Esoteric Antithesis doesn't really grant you any bonus. Consider a case where you're hunting werewolves, which seem appropriately cursed for a Thaumaturgist. His knowledge of dark mysteries tells him they're weak to silver, so he tells everyone in the party to bring Silversheen. Now the other martials do bonus damage, and Esoteric Antithesis, your entire damage bonus feature, does... nothing, because you're already triggering the weakness. The net result is that the Thaumaturgist is actually best at fighting flavorless, weaknessless humanoids.

So a Thaumaturgist is good at hunting vampires (Common, no numerical weakness), okay at hunting werewolves (Common, but double dipping weaknesses), bad at hunting Dracula (High level, likely Unique), and terrible at hunting Werewolf Dracula (High level, likely Unique, double dipping weaknesses). Against hypothetical Werewolf Dracula, you're practically a featureless martial, while everyone else proceeds as normal.

Except Swashbuckler, I suppose, who can't get his groove on, but that's another issue entirely.

I think you guys need to explain what you think crit fishing is and why on earth it would apply to this.

We can envision some sort of spectrum of variance, where at one end we have a weapon/class/etc. that deals 10 damage 100% of the time and at the other end we have something that deals 0 damage 99% of the time and 1000 damage 1% of the time. Obviously nothing in 2e is that extreme, but having Fatal/Deadly and balancing a weapon's average damage around those traits pushes you further towards the "high variance" end, and thus a crit fishing scenario. Sure, you can build in ways to get more crits, but that doesn't change the fact that your damage is based around fishing for those crits. D&D5e's crit fishers are based around gaining Advantage/Elven Accuracy for probability manipulation, even before they start stacking dice to be multiplied. PF2e's crit fishers are based around having higher base accuracy by virtue of being Fighters/Gunslingers. None of that makes them not crit fishers.

"They just have access to weapons that deal extra damage on a crit." is factual on its own, but misses that the regular hits deal less damage than their competitors! So even when the average is the same (and its not), the variance is higher, and that's the feel bad in a system that rewards consistent power. Some variance is fun, yes, but not every Fighter wants to be a Pick fighter and maybe not every Gunslinger wants to be a gambler.

I quite like the idea of crit fishing and a one attack per turn martial.

These are both fine ideas when they're separated. Combined, they're one too many layers of variance in a game that demands tactics and consistency. Failing to down an opponent who then gets an extra turn to smash somebody's face in (perhaps yours!) feels awful, as does overkilling a weakened target.

I'd much rather have a class that can't crit and does increased damage on its regular successes than one that can only deal good damage on its critical hits.

RootOfAllThings wrote:

As interpreted in this thread, it can have multiple targets and an area due to its splash.

...um... how so?

Splash is not mentioned in the Areas rule, so isn't an area and doesn't have to follow any of the rules for areas.

Splash is not mentioned in the Targets rule, so - unlike area effects which are mentioned in this rule - it isn't considered a form of targeting by the rules.

The Splash rule contains all the relevant details for things that get labeled with it, and the only time it mentions the word "target" is when referring to the initial damage target - it does not say, or imply in any way, that the creatures that weren't the initial target are also targets.

RootOfAllthings wrote:

Relevant to this thread because of when the Golem Antimagic is triggered, if the Golem is standing next to some poor, un-antimagical schmuck.

There is no instance in which Golem Antimagic's effects change based on who or what the golem is standing next to.

So Acid Splash's splash damage doesn't count as "affecting" a Golem for the purposes of its Harmed By clause? It's magical, it's a spell, and it's affecting the Golem in the casual sense of the word, but it's not affecting the Golem in the sense of targeting being nigh synonymous with affecting?

This discussion about the minutiae of targeting and affecting reminds me of the recent clarification of Acid Splash. In short, how many targets does Acid Splash have?

As written, it has one target and no area. As interpreted in this thread, it can have multiple targets and an area due to its splash. Either way, if you're standing next to somebody you can never use a Ring of Counterspells to protect yourself from a potentially lethal Acid Splash, because in one case you're not a target and in another case you're too late to counteract the spell.

Relevant to this thread because of when the Golem Antimagic is triggered, if the Golem is standing next to some poor, un-antimagical schmuck.

Leading to the conclusion that yes, putting a golem in the area of an area effect spell is the same thing as targeting the golem (and anything else in the area) with said spell.

By this logic, if the golem is concealed or hidden (by fog, darkness, or blinding the caster), then you have to pass a flat check in order for it to be affected by Cone of Cold or Fireball, per the rules for Detecting Creatures. Targeting is targeting; you can make an argument for casual language but the argument should also be made for *consistent* language.