Ryangwy's page

siegfriedliner wrote:

It's not the strongest dedication feat compared to spirit warrior and exemplar it's weaker, compared to two weapon fighter (double slice), paladin (scaling armour proficiency, skill access to a strong focus spell and reaction), rogue (light armour proficiency, skill feat and two proficiencies), blessed one (powerful focus spell) it's on par.

I am not declaring it as weak it's a top tier dedication but given it's I'm the middle of the best dedication feats it's not an outlier.

You're forgetting with all of these comparisons that the Psychic dedication gives more than just a focus point and a focus spell. You get to choose from a strong list of focus spell options, which comes with your choice of improved psi cantrips (for example the ability to cast Shield on your allies instead of yourself, or cast melee Ignition with 10ft reach), and you get to choose whether you cast it with Intelligence or Charisma. The dedication also gives you access to the entire Occult spell list via item activations (scrolls and wands).

In my opinion if you think gaining all of these things is not objectively stronger than just gaining a 1st level Fighter feat, you don't have much imagination.

Also, specialised archetypes are allowed to offer more because they don't give unbounded access to any number of other things. Multiclass dedications offer every class feat up to 10th level, potentially. It's a lot of potential combinations.

At the risk of going even further off topic, I don't think wands are good for the game at all. They end up being horribly overpriced for casters* to balance out people poaching them with trick magic item/dedications. As a result, they become trap options for casters. If a magical effect is so desperately needed that it's make or break for a casterless party, then the effect should be available in a non-spell format. Making wands into permanent spell catalysts would be much more interesting.

You... do know that wands are priced simply because that's what a infinite source of a consumable is worth, right? There's a rule for making wands of any kind of consumable, called Gardens. It has nothing to do with trick magic items, except inasmuch as people with 2nd rank slots like 3rd rank scrolls more relatively than people with 4th rank slots, but that's not a problem with wands

I think I'd rather buff the dedications to give third cantrip (and cantrip expansion to give IDK four) than hand out focus spells like candy. Focus spells are good! A two feat commitment that also gets you some useful things is like... just good manners.

What is Fighter and Ranger Dedication doing? There's an archetype that does everything archery related, it's called Archer.

Also, why Wolf Stance? You will never want to spend essentially 3 actions to make a slightly better melee strike than powerful blows, because you never want to be out of Monastic Archer Stance. Same for why you have Mobile Shot Stance there, unless you're trying to do Fuse Stance memes which you're a few levels short for. Guarded Movement does 90% of what you want it to do.

Remember, Monastic Archer Stance qualifies you for any feat that makes unarmed attack, like one-inch punch and disrupt qi. Still, absolutely grab more qi spells like harmonise qi (giving you infinite out of combat healing and pinch healing in combat)

Your current issue is that you're blowing a lot of feats on things you can't use. You're perpetually in Monastic Archer Stance so look through feats that way. Lightning Swap is useless, bows always have a free hand. Both your other stances are useless. Reactive Striker is useless. Replacing all that with a noncombat archetype would be more useful, I'm guessing you're screwing yourself over swapping stances for mediocre benefits.

Ryangwy wrote:

What are your teammates? Str fighters have heavy armour and thus can flex either Int or Cha; whichever one is underserved currently. I've GM'd for a fighter than was the brains of the party at +2 Int and that went fine, and in general Int and Cha have too many skills for one person to support comfortably anyway.

If your party is lacking in skills, use your free archetype to pick up skill improving ones like Dandy. If your party is fine there, you have more room to use it for combat. Do you think you will be encountering enemies weak to holy? Try getting ways to add that damage type. Is the rest of your party very squishy? There are many defensive archetypes that let you protect allies. Do you need more killing power? OK, that's harder to get.

We have a Champion, Cleric, Rogue, Ranger and Wizard.

Thanks for the advice.

You are definitely not lacking in killing power, defensiveness or skills, here! Assuming the Champion or Rogue isn't doing it already, consider Marshal - in a group this big with this many people looking to clobber, handing out group buffs/debuffs will be very welcome. You'd want to deconflict which ones, since buffs don't stack - Inspiring Marshal might be awkward if your cleric opens every fight with Bless, and Dread Marshal will be a bit less useful if people are doing status bonus to damage like with Bard dedication.

There's two more interesting ones; Derivin's Cunning stance is unfortunately uncommon and Firebrands, a notoriously badly thought out product many GMs are hesitant on, but it leverages Deception to give +skills and more interestingly prevents reactions if someone hits the enemy while flat footed - the rogue will be happy. Strategist Stance is the sole Int-based one, granting +Reflex and as its interesting effect turning a successful Recall Knowledge into off guard for an ally. This goes well with Combat Assessment.

It'll take until level 4 to pay that off, but that's fairly normal for dedications.

I mean, you could also just bump up the numbers on Gaze As Sharp As Steel. I think it's fine as it is but my player would be overjoyed.

But really I think the Exemplar has a lot of ways to be built none of which are distinctly better than each other. If you judge every ikon by how well they are gleaming blade, then you'll be sad, because gleaming blade is designed to not be gleaming blade every other turn, that's why it looks so nice. And there's enough ikons most people can find two good ones.

The Wizard schools fundamentally don't even have a unified thesis of operation. They don't have the same number of spells per rank. They don't have the same breadth of concept. There are common schools with uncommon spells on them and nobody can tell me what that's supposed to mean for spell access.

I rag a lot on remastered Oracle but at least all the curses are unified (which makes some of them really good and others really bad, but w.e., at least you can tell what they're getting at) Wizards can't even figure out what portion of their power budget is from schools. Admittedly, they can't figure out which portion are from thesis either; the thesis remains as unbalanced and wildly differing in purpose as premaster.

There are also other problems with remaster wizards but if you want to narrow it down to schools I have to say they're the most incoherent thing that's been printed as a subclass feature in a PF2e book

What are your teammates? Str fighters have heavy armour and thus can flex either Int or Cha; whichever one is underserved currently. I've GM'd for a fighter than was the brains of the party at +2 Int and that went fine, and in general Int and Cha have too many skills for one person to support comfortably anyway.

If your party is lacking in skills, use your free archetype to pick up skill improving ones like Dandy. If your party is fine there, you have more room to use it for combat. Do you think you will be encountering enemies weak to holy? Try getting ways to add that damage type. Is the rest of your party very squishy? There are many defensive archetypes that let you protect allies. Do you need more killing power? OK, that's harder to get.

It's one of the reason I suggested moving the unique psi cantrip to the Dedication and the ability to Amp to a later feat instead - the unique cantrip is interesting but not supremely out of line for a regular cantrip (unlike Bard focus cantrips) and so can safely be granted at 2, amps are a focus spells and should be treated like every other dedication-granted focus spell ever.

GMing for a Swashbuckler now, and them ending the turn with Panache does make the next turn awkward especially when stuck with an opponent who doesn't move. I think the idea has legs

To be fair, the pre-Remaster oracle had absolutely horrible balance between the mysteries. Much worse than the Remaster oracle; there were literally mysteries that you did not ever want to take because they were so bad.

Ugh, no way. Because the old mysteries had unique benefits as well, even the jankiest mystery (premaster Ancestors) had people willing to try it. Now, though? Nothing except the granted spells and focus spells are unique, and the divine list hardly needs most of them. The bad ones are theoretically less bad but they also are almost strictly worse than just running Cosmos, whereas before they were at least entertainingly bad in a unique way.

I'd rather they staple the 4 slots and the granted spells onto premaster Oracle if they were that rushed.

Exemplar is extremely forgiving to people who select the 'suboptimal' (which I don't really find Gaze to be but w.e. if you get three PF2e groups to discuss internal balance you get five different answers) ikons and get into 'suboptimal' patterns. It's possible to switch off your bonuses at the wrong time but it's fairly obvious what happened and a learnable moment which, you know, those are good? It's lenticular design. And you have three (more with feats) ikons to tinker with.

Honestly I find suggestions about always having the weapon ikon active to be more harmful, not less, for ease of learning and design space of ikons.

If you want to use 2 weapon ikons you can just use them? The Exemplar in my game uses Gaze because he uses Barrow's Blade, an ikon you want to sit in for a bit before shifting out of. He originally used Scar of the Survivor, but due to party composition issues that ended up a nonbo, because Barrow's tended to heal him enough that Scar is a waste, or he's damaged enough he needs Heal right now and not fiddling with ikons on his turn.

Gleaming Blade is kinda pointless to discuss because the weapon he's using isn't eligible, and since we're starting from level 1 so is Horn. Bands is his third ikon but with the chaos of battle he tend to not know when he needs the extra move. Gaze emerges quite naturally as his preferred second ikon.

I mean, if we're looking for a unique benefit Psychic Dedication can grant, why not shuffle the unique psi cantrip to the Dedication?

If you think the current class is fine then that's great, but I think we can agree you are in the minority here when most of the users in the thread seem to agree exemplars tend to rotate between the same two ikons most of the time.

I mean, I think that that's a perfectly fine rotation and I'm not sure what's wrong with that? Sure, if the Exemplar had every ikon active all the time and could Transedence whenever (a bit of a simplification of your idea but still) and they were otherwise unchanged they would be stronger but I don't think they need to be stronger than they are currently... and also yeah, rogue is currently a bit too good because they QOLd every possible sticking point until they don't have a single moment they can't do their thing. A little bit if friction is good! The Exemplar already has a lot of flexibility built in, having to wait one turn isn't the end of the world, especially since the turn you're waiting isn't a dead turn by any standard.

I also know you could probably take another weapon ikon as your third ikon as well, but why not...

The Exemplar I run for uses Barrow's Edge, which both deviates from +2 damage and provides an alternative source of healing. They also don't Spark Transedence every round, content to stay on Barrow's Edge if there's other things to do with their action like moving twice their speed or opening doors.

The Exemplar isn't the Inventor who can completely fail to get their damage bonus for an entire fight, it's fine that you have to Make Choices and that those choices effect what you are. And if your choices mean you don't get 90% uptime on a weapon ikon, I should point out Champion gets nothing and is one of the best class in the game and the support options Exemplar get are pretty good.

When you get into 'Gaze is bad because you could instead blow 3+ feats on taking rogue archetype, archetype sneak attack and some other bespoke action' which ignores what Gaze does in the context of an Exemplar rotation I think you're getting too tunnel visioned into some arbitrary optimised DPS bar for your own good.

In the example I mentioned of a Gleaming Blade / Scar of the Survivor / Gaze Sharp as Steel exemplar, the most likely action rotation is going to be trascend with Gleaming Blade at the end of turn a) and shift immanence to Scar of the Survivor, and then trascend with Scar of the Survivor at the beggining of turn b) to shift immanence to Gleaming Blade to benefit from its damage boost and to repeat this routine again on the next turn. A +1 bonus to Perception checks and a +2 to AC against ranged attacks is IMO a situational bonus that, if you were to shift into it, would also mean you'll...

You could replace Scar of the Survivor with Gaze as Sharp as Steel in that rotation? And yes, Exemplars are baseline expected to have two main ikons they bounce between to keep all Strikes done by weapon ikons, I don't see what's wrong with that. It's a fairly clear picture, and you can choose to deviate when you need to without shooting yourself in the foot if weapon icons were permanent. Right now your third ikon could be a different weapon, or a situational ikon like Bands of Imprisonment, that's good!

(Also, Implement Empowerment exists because Thaumaturges have one hand and it compensates for that. Exemplars can just... use a 2 handed weapon or a shield)

It's inefficient. It's lack of synergy. It's waste. It's the extra hoops that hold back the swashbuckler, the witch hexes, the inventor, and many other classes.

Have you considered that maybe it's intentional that you can't just pile on everything into boosting one thing and that by doing so individual effects can be more powerful and splasher and also your character doesn't roll into a ball and cry because you got hit by Slow.

Gaze as Sharp as Steel is your off turn weapon ikon, really. Does make you vulnerable to precision immunity but you're still better off than rogues and swashbucklers

The only obvious thing you're missing is a tanky front liner, and of course you only have one tradition of magic (though it's easy for the Thaumaturge to be able to use every scroll in the game).

You don't really need a tanky frontliner if everyone in the party is decently defensive, though; Druid is tanky for a caster with zero investment needed, and all the martials are melee and so don't fold into a ball and cry if a reactive strike enemy comes around, so there's not much need for a tanky 'frontliner' when you have three melee users happy to divide the aggro between them and a cloistered cleric and leaf order druid to pick up the slack if anyone accrues too much damage.

If anything, the party is missing a glass cannon attacker who can do big damage.

If you want to know about differing cultural beliefs, read the Lost Omens for the region your campaign is set in, the gazeteer at the back of the AP if you're running an AP or in the same region as one, or in the worst case scenario Player/Monster Core. Paizo has plenty to say about differing cultural beliefs in their world, but none of that can be summarised in a statblock in a way that isn't a pain for anyone running the bits of the game the statblock is important for. That's why the Lost Omens and backmatters exist!

My gutsense is that an action that doesn't require you going out of the way or taking advantage of the environment in a cinematic fashion should be a hard DC, and 'Tumble Through on a straight line' seems apt. You need to put in a bit more effort to sell it to me, either description-wise or in difficulty.

Seen one Exemplar so far - you'll be surprised how far Gaze as Sharp as Steel + any melee ikon + Hurl at the horizon (with a returning rune) can take you. Hi, yes, I would like a thrown d12 weapon please. Vow of Mortal Defiance is also a bizarrely good undead chewer because almost all undead are unholy but most aren't weak to holy; if that player starts their turn 'next' (within 10ft, because thrown) to some chonking zombie brute (yes, we are playing Blood Lords, how did you guess) that is a lot of dice to throw.

I think it was ruled with... Performance? That a Swashbuckler can initiate a skill action against a creature normally immune to it due to traits (not the cooldown immunity for Demoralize) and still get panache if they passed the DC if the creature wasn't immune, so I'd apply the same for Tumble Through. If you fail the check... you still 'tumble through' the ghost and get the fail effect because that wasn't very bravado.

IMO the issues with Animist balance is the same as Remaster Rogue - a chassis that's just a little too good at everything tied to a class concept that has ridiculous flexibility already. It's one of those 'but why is giving this guy so much incidental durability core to their class concept' things when there's also the other class with less core flexibility over there who is somehow less durable as well.

Elf Step Liturgist mostly just points out they have the ceiling to match fragile Sorcerers at peak whatever - the core problem is the Animist has the concept of being able to be a blasty sorcerer, a shapeshifting druid, a healer and more all in the same day, and also it's a 8HP Wis medium armour 3 slot caster with 4 floating Lore skills.

Ryangwy wrote:

The fact the animist can so easy cross-list is a big deal, yeah. My Animist player complained about the lack of Reflex targeting spells, then I just pointed them at the vessel they forgot existed. Done. Which caster can just do that?

At the risk of being taken too seriously... A wizard with prep time :)

Not really - even a spell substitution wizard with infinite money (the only wizard who can specifically do this) has no access to healing and poor access to condition removal, for instance, and they definitely can't change out their focus spells.

I'll also bring up how this is one example of spells at the Animist's disposal that target Reflex saves: as we all know, being able to target all three saves is quite a big plus, and this is something the Animist can do far more easily than any other divine caster thanks to their apparition and vessel spells. The divine list naturally targets Fortitude and Will quite well, but isn't quite so good with Reflex saves for the most part. Having access to many more Reflex save spells rounds this out nicely, and once more adds to the class's adaptability. By contrast, one of the Elemental Sorcerer's weaknesses that doesn't get brought up much in these discussions is that they're overly reliant on Reflex saves for blasting, and struggle quite significantly against enemies strong in those saves. Thus, whether the Animist is blasting or debuffing, they can adapt their spells to an enemy's saves far better than most other classes.

The fact the animist can so easy cross-list is a big deal, yeah. My Animist player complained about the lack of Reflex targeting spells, then I just pointed them at the vessel they forgot existed. Done. Which caster can just do that?

Yeah, like, arguing about 9th level Liturgist Elf Steps is just getting lost in the weeds. The Animist is the only class that gets to switch between multiple good subclasses at zero cost. The same Animist gets Earth Bile, Darkened Forest Form, Garden of Healing and Trickster's Mirror at no cost, and also changes half their spells to match while they're at it. The druid pays two feats to get one more focus spell and gets no additional spells out of it. The witch gets one spell known, has to prep it, and the focus spell is not nearly as strong (and also competes with their cantrip due to the hex trait).

And that Animist may not be the ceiling of power of those niches, but it starts a lot closer to that ceiling with no feat expenditure than most classes.

I dont see it as a systemic problem if we as players can dream up specific scenarios in which one class shines. Those are certainly out there (for many classes!). What matters for balance is class capabilities across a wide range of encounters, a wide range of builds, a wide range of levels, etc..

I'm not sure why you think I'm talking about max-DPR Animist here (that's Teridax and Deriven's particular combination and the Animist I'm GMing for is no where near there). I'm talking about how the Animist by default gets access to multiple good DPR builds and support casting on the same chassis with no build cost. Earth Bile Animist is up there with primal witch and elemental sorcerer, because they get a truncated blasting spell list handed to them for free. Using any of the melee options put you roughly at an unsupported martial who needs an action to enable their gimmick, except you're also the support. And aside from choosing whether to invest in Str at all, you can pivot from one to another to e.g. healer with a snap of a finger. It is in fact what you're talking about here: a class who is always capable of functioning at a wide range of encounters and who can pivot in 10min though a wide range of builds.

And Liturgist+Elf Step isn't some 1000IQ combo that requires paging through the alchemical items list and measuring average DPR of persistent damage to enable. It's a free action you want bundled with Step and an ancestry feat from a core ancestry that lets you Step twice.

As for Starshot vs Unfailing Bow... Starshot's splash damage is inconvenient, but the AoE is very nice (Save+Strike has always been solid). Unfailing Bow's critical damage is nice, but the transcend is very, very hard to use consistently unless you are able to spam fortune effects. And being unable to consistently transcend makes for a very unhappy exemplar.

The tricky thing is that while you do get the free reload with every transcendence, both ranged ikons then immediately uses it for the transendance, which forces you to commit to looping transcendence (at least Gaze as Sharp as Steel gives you one more attack, though you feel sad if you face precision immune enemies).

Starshot uses your base Strike damage, which makes things like Fatal, Deadly and Scatter dead weight, unfortunately. I think the best choices are d10 kickback weapons, who do apply their damage bonus to starshot; harmona gun being standard, but the best might be the gun-sword, who gives you a backup melee weapon for when endlessly looping AOEs gets difficult.

Of course, you also have to deal with being kinda useless until you hit level 3...

I should point out that balance matters most in semi-optimised groups, not maximally-optimised groups. Paizo isn't going to outthink a dozen Derivens who play more games of PF2e in a month than the entire company can afford to do in a year, but they can (and need to) present a balanced case for the average 'I finished an AP in 1 year' group. That's why it's good that the alchemist went from having 100 daily preps to 20 daily preps and 10 encounter preps, why the wizard is still such a contentious point compared to every other caster.

It's why 'the Animist is as good as a martial who doesn't have a dedicated buffbot, while still being able to cast half the spells of said buffbot' is a big problem, especially if, you know, the players replace the cleric with an animist. While also having good damage. And good utility effects. And they can change it all up every 10min. Do you know how much the inventor pays to be able to rejigger their kit every day? The animist pays almost nothing (split spontaneous and prepared is kinda a worst of both worlds thing, since you have insufficient slots to really make use of the flexibility either has, but you get cross-list spells instead) for it, and said flexibility comes with very good 1-action focus spells.

Sure, if you know exactly what you're coming up against because your group tends to run similar combat/noncombat types, you can probably make a list of four classes whose interlocking effect is better than replacing any one with an Animist. But it's a big problem that the average role-filling party of four can have every role filled near-optimally with the same Animist after a 10min break.

Realistically, all the telemetry (that's the technical term) that Baldur's Gate 3 generated on D&D 5e, a game with a far larger budget, manpower and audience than PF2e, wasn't enough to keep BG3 bug free (or even bug-low, especially in later acts), let alone have meaningful impact on D&D5.5. It definitely hasn't made for faster errata, or the errata coming out being more of use.

Converting data into meaningful action is, as a person who has that as a job, not at all an easy process, but it wouldn't be a gamer forum if people didn't insist [idea from another game/industry/field] would fix all the problems here despite them not fixing said problems in their home field where they have institutional and structural advantages.

Ryangwy wrote:

Honestly I think this is a great idea and also avoids the issues with divine simplicity, [ancestry] weapon familiarity and such. Every weapon group gets one or two simple weapon profiles (for one or two handed). Martial weapons are described as one or two additional traits (some traits are worth more than others) added to a simple weapon, plus another tier of one to two traits you can add on to become an advanced weapon (so most weapon names cover both a martial and advanced version and technically a simple version). Maybe some weapon groups have no simple versions if it's important that there are no e.g. simple bows. [Ancestry] weapon familiarity can just add a new set of advanced traits you can slap onto certain weapon types.

Honestly, this does sound appealing, having proficiency unlocking additional traits, or improvements on the weapon.

This way technically, wielding a sword may be much like wielding a club for someone not particularly skilled at the sword, but by having more acute proficiency with it might unlock greater damage die, and the versatile P.

Some weapons might actually have some traits even with simple proficiency, but greater proficiency would be able to unlock additional traits. In some cases honestly, it might make some weapons that are different in simple form, share a lot of the same traits by they time they get to martial proficiency but that still leaves the value and flavor as becomes meaningful for those whom aren't a proficient in the world.

I'd almost say the biggest impact would be it would complicate the weapon tables more.

The way I imagine it, the table would list the base (usually simple) weapon, indent, upgraded weapon (martial), upgraded weapon (advanced). Which I believe Starfinder 2e already does, so it probably isn't a great issue.

Another fun side effect is that it'll make abilities that grant you temporary or reduced martial proficiency with all weapons a lot more useful, as you are significantly more likely to have a simple weapon (that you have proficiency with) which also has a martial form, than the current status of needing to somehow find a martial weapon that you had never used before.

I'm partial to a mastery system, myself. Let everyone use all the weapons, but weapons will have very simple profiles with minimal traits unless you are a martial class or otherwise have some special training. Then you have one, maybe two tiers of improvements a weapon can have to its traits or other statistics.

Honestly I think this is a great idea and also avoids the issues with divine simplicity, [ancestry] weapon familiarity and such. Every weapon group gets one or two simple weapon profiles (for one or two handed). Martial weapons are described as one or two additional traits (some traits are worth more than others) added to a simple weapon, plus another tier of one to two traits you can add on to become an advanced weapon (so most weapon names cover both a martial and advanced version and technically a simple version). Maybe some weapon groups have no simple versions if it's important that there are no e.g. simple bows. [Ancestry] weapon familiarity can just add a new set of advanced traits you can slap onto certain weapon types.

If they cannot get a 2nd human to read submitted content before publishing it, that's not acceptable in my book.

If ttrpg development industry-wide is a joke, then it's still a joke. The quality doesn't magically improve because it's surrounded by worse.

The entire point is that TTRPGs genuinely have a harder time finding a second (or third, or fourth) person to double check things than video games, because you can't do things like 'run the program until it crashes' or 'boot up a dummy 3hr play session microfocused on this one issue for every possible issue' because TTRPGs are run by people and not machines.

If this is a problem for you, stop playing TTRPGs. It's not a issue fixable by the genre. You're doing the equivalent of barging into a homemade cookie shop and asking them why their cookies are of unequal weight when mass-market brands manage to have them all identical.

(This is not saying there are things Paizo can't fix, and they damn well should fix Oracle and make all the PFS guidance actual rules or otherwise revise them, but your original request of making sure every printable option is balanced down to the last feat and spell is not possible)

Professional studios invent and use procedures and processes to accommodate for the fact that humans are fallible. These systems are often called "QA," because those steps are designed to ensure quality. Every studio is full of devs that will make outright errors, all the time.

Even the most basic QA would have prevented these mistakes from being published. The kind of mistakes we have seen, like Firework Technician being published with infused reagents, are simply not supposed to be possible for a professional studio. This is a behavior they can get away with because of the "calcified blue pond" problem, where they have a captive audience by the balls, some of which will verbally spar to defend Paizo from even this egregious result.

I am going to repeatedly remind you that you're applying terminology from video games to TTRPGs and completely ignoring how the two are different in terms of development, ability to test, data collection and such.

Bring me a TTRPG of PF2e's complexity that has significantly fewer mistakes than it in terms of balance. Don't randomly swerve off to talk about video games, an actual TTRPG

One of the very irritating thing about 'realism' when it came to size was what a friend of mine who is trying to make a more balanced 3.5e experience call the 'double dipping' effect. Smaller creatures had bonuses to AC, Hide, Sneak, and then also had racial bonuses to Dex. Larger creatures got weapons that dealt more damage and also racial bonuses to Str. Bluntly, the focus on making every individual bit of the rule that could possibly interface with size do so ended up making for absurd results like functionally invisible pixies or 0 damage halfling daggers.

PF2e does have size bonuses - they're almost entirely inside spells and effects that adjust size, and assume that the base stat, skill etc. bonuses of a PC of a given baseline size accounts for their size already. A Str 18 pixie barbarian has put in extraordinary effort to be as strong as a Str 18 jotunborn, but that's fine, because PCs are exceptional.

Dude, this is just untrue. Most "professional" game studios will make certain that devs are on the same page, and have actual procedures and internal reference material that prevents "dud" feats from being published.

Things like line graphs or charts that plot out the baseline average dmg/healing/etc that PCs abilities grant across the levels, etc.

I'm not going to say the Paizo is a masterclass at preventing outliers (FIREBRANDS) or that the remaster has made some very dubious decisions in what classes needed power boosts and what didn't (not just Core/Core2, but even with G&G remastered I'm 'impressed' how they updated Gunslinger, which was passably functional, greatly but not Inventor)

... but from a baseline of 'how much do you expect each class to do', there is no TTRPG that has this much options and still has the same baseline. You can see how even the Inventor and Fighter are baseline comparable. You can go further by cutting off options - like how 13th Age removes weapon types so you just have d6/d8/d10 weapons and nothing else, or how 4e controls exactly how many daily/encounter powers and even how much healing each PC has. But you don't get PF2e's 'a class for every type of player' approach and better balance than PF2e.

... Also, like, every example you put out is a digital game, and I think you may not understand how different the level of data collection and change control digital games have over pen and paper.

Nothing in PF2e prevents printing a 'divert the river' or 'slice a whole forest of non-monster trees', though. Actually, given how cursed the wording of the PF2e Control Water spell is, we arguably have the first non-mythic already...

Also, they're not really actions people want to do all the time, so they could instead be mythic skill actions, in which case they're already implemented as needed.

It's a shame they didn't go back and add some circumstance bonus to make them work in those cases. Group Coercion/Impression could add a bonus to non-Coerce/Make an Impression Intimidation/Diplomacy checks towards five or more people equal to your proficiency rank, for instance, which would now make it work. Glad-Hand lets you roll twice on the first Diplomacy skill check in a social encounter. Charming Liar could grant the effects of a success on a Diplomacy check in general so long as the Deception check involves lying to do the specific stuff listed and there's a valid Diplomacy roll to make. Confabulator could give you a circumstance bonus if you use Deception repeatedly for a skill encounter. Express Rider can let you make a Nature check to Command an Animal 1/day during a chase where you are riding as an additional roll during the chase.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Another thing we've found mythic suffers from is the same thing PF2 suffers from: an overabundance of actions that aren't worth using.

Applies to more than just actions I think. Nothing has quite sucked away my general interest in new releases like the knowledge that only 10% of new options will be worth using.

10% would be a ridiculously good hit rate, though. I'm assuming you mean player option books, but even then I think the Core was hitting generously 20% due to how spells and items are. I'm not sure you could go higher than that without running out of material to produce or introducing rampant power creep.

I understand the cost is an effort to balance, but... ooof. Seems like what that really does is make str ranged builds possible in campaigns that start at high level, while still locking low level str builds out of the range game. Which maybe isn't so bad, given that at higher levels characters are more likely to face threats they can't deal with via normal movement & melee.

Still, it seems like just using a bigger rock shouldn't cost a gold piece, and if str characters can't just throw cobblestones using "brutal", I don't see how a sling changes things.

A property rune that makes a propulsive or thrown weapon Brutal might make more sense and again fits with the "mid-higher level characters need more options outside melee" idea.

I understand that sling bullets do need special treatment to be actually good at their job, and the heavier one is the more effort it takes. And 'str ranged costs money' is already how the game is set up.

Property runes would be, I feel, homogenising; we already have returning as a 'pay this tax to function' rune and I'm not keen on getting more. And the flavour of specifically slings being able to do it is important, I feel. Drives diversity.

My limited experience with using mythic actually was in a non-mythic game - I just took the 11-20 mythic destinies, stripped out anything that required a mythic point and gave it to players and they did in fact feel pretty mythic.

Putting that terrible mythic proficiency as a baseline was a mistake, as was trying to fit mythic in at 1-10, IMO. Mythic creatures shouldn't have standardised resistances that are overcome by doing boring stuff, they should have weird funky resistances that need to be overcome by doing impressive looking things that aren't just throwing dice. Distance is one aspect that feels the easiest to make mythic without affecting actual combat as much. This mythic creature's resist 100 decreases per feet forced movement, but regains 25 at the beginning of each round. That mythic creature's resistance is only deactivated if it is more than 30ft above ground. Go figure out how your bag of tricks can pull off those movement.

While it's definitely broadly agreed that uncommon needs to be separated into if it's for flavour (like racial weapons), expectations (like teleport and mind reading and I would like to remind everyone that common Wizard schools can get these), being in an AP or being a focus spell (ugh), I think 'further modularity' is just going to be a huge mess, esp since Paizo has a tepid track record of maintaining the current modularity. Mythic was a less-than-impressive attempt at said modularity - I'm not convinced that having plug-and-play teleport modules is going to be more useful than simply changing the damn trait on them to 'challenge' or something, since trying to modularise it will inevitably lead to something that should be in the module not and vice versa and we'll haave exponential kineticits Mythic arguments forever.

We have to work with the Paizo we have, not the one we want.

Based on this, I think the situation that could make both parties happy would be one in which Vancian spellcasting is no longer the default, but still exists as an option: you'd have to tell me how you'd feel about this, but presumably if casters using magic at-will didn't feel like proper spellcasting to you, that might still be fine if you could easily bolt on a Vancian spellcasting template onto any caster you'd like and get to play that caster the exact way you'd want. Meanwhile, players who dislike Vancian spellcasting would be able to...

I think the problem is the huge gulf between daily and non-daily abilities and large number of at-will spells causing even more decision paralysis. It's currently easy to scale kineticists into 'spellcasters' because we have a lot of daily spells to compare to and the kineticist just doesn't have many unscaling effects to worry about; in a world where everyone is a kineticist, I don't have any idea how you would figure out spell slots from there. Stuff like Haste and Slow just can't exist as at-wills, so the baseline world where everything is at-will will just never have them.

Devs *know* that their creation will result in players being unable to make informed choices, and that hurts mentally. This pain can then cause them to post-hoc invent the idea that such arcane system mechanics are not really a problem or paint point for the majority, but instead are a reward for the minority.

Have you considered that needing to be perfectly optimal is a vanishingly small problem for a minority of people and that many players do value discovery more than perfect information? There's player psychographic charts that explain what different people get out of something.

I'm going to quote what Monte Cook thought was Ivory Tower design

To continue to use the simplistic example above, the Toughness feat could have been written to make it clear that it was for 1st-level elf wizards (where it is likely to give them a 100 percent increase in hit points). It's also handy when you know you're playing a one-shot session with 1st-level characters, like at a convention (you sure don't want to take item creation feats in such an instance, for example). Ivory Tower Game Design requires a two-step process on the part of the reader. You read the rule, and then you think about how it fits in with the rest of the game. There's a moment of understanding, and then a moment of comprehension. That's not a terrible thing, but neither is just providing the reader with both steps, at least some of the time.

It's specifically that you put in a whole lot of choices that may only be good in very specific circumstances and not signposting who they exist for. This is empathetically not the case for PF2e, because a lot of effort has been made in everything except spells to say 'GET THIS STAT TO DO THAT' (including a flat stat gain system that makes the tradeoffs very obvious and easy to work with compared to old point buy), siloed class feats, subclasses and so on, plus back end math to make sure that the obvious low-effort signposted path for most classes (except spells, which I do agree need to be worked on) will work just fine.

You don't need to know that retrieval prisms exist to be a good sorcerer. You just need to max out your KAS, and maybe prioritise Dex and Con a bit more than obvious.

(I've also played Monster Hunter with zero information on monster parts, and it was fun and I had a blast. I bet the vast majority of MH players are like me. Respect to the wiki writers, but you don't need to know exact part HP to have fun, nor do you need to know IV/EV for Pokemon to be fun.)

Trip.H, if your definition of Ivory Tower is that any amount of learning is needed, that's every TTRPG longer than 2 pages ever.

Slay the Spire and Inscryption are video games they can deal with randomness of options and perception in a way a TTRPG cannot. Bringing them in doesn't matter in the same way that chess doesn't matter when talking about movement in PF2e.

I have a player with a library robe they never used despite it being exactly what you said, a 2-action handless scroll. They were totally fine, as was them never using their free focus point item. PF2e isn't going to fall apart because of those matters. There's a complexity issue, true, which is what this thread is about, but players can just forget about half the complexity and play identically to when they were lower levels with fewer feats and items and be fine.

In 3.5e, ho boy. When people say Ivory Tower design they mean that level of difference between someone picking options on the go with a minimal eye to coherence and someone busting out the guides. Retrieval Prism is not it and trying to brig it up erodes the points being made.

Pf2 absolutely does suffer from the exact same Ivory Tower design, like, a lot.

How many times do we see newbies being chastised for not maximizing their KAS, and their attack stat? Are they at DEX capped AC?

Even common "mistakes" like that are manifestations of this issue. Every time it's less of an "option" and is more of a "mistake," that is Ivory Tower.
Every must-grab feat to select, every trap feat to avoid, etc.

Ivory Tower specifically means creating feats and options that are intentionally subpar and usually also the most straightforward, though. PF2e's stat maximisation is the opposite of that, if you looked at your KAS and went 'wow I should totally leave that as +2' that's deliberately driving into traffic. And the vast majority of classes have their KAS as their attacking stat, and most melee classes are also heavily signposted to max out AC as well.

And once you hit those baselines, there's very few feats that can make your character worse (Vampire Dedication, I suppose). Sure, some feats are really good, but PF2e isn't a game where you will die even with zero feats. Spells are harder, but that's why most spellcasters come with a list of decent spells to have, and easy access to just switching them out.

An alchemist, especially postmaster with VVs, who just throws bombs every turn is perfectly system functional. Sure, you could do more, but that's true of like... every system with character building.

2. Metamagic was amazing. Prepared casting or certain feats allowed very efficient use of metamagic.

3. Access to amazing feats that boosted DC and allowed you to turn a few spells into spontaneous.

4. Huge number of slots.

5. Slots were flexible and could be kept empty throughout day.

6. Intelligence based skills were the main way to recall knowledge and were a free action to use. They knew everything.

The funny thing is that the wizard has partial access to all of these things through their thesis, but they only get one thesis, and from my (admittedly limited) experience the end result is that you have a situation where any one of these points can be taken for a given wizard but not all, and for no thematic gain because unlike most other subclasses the thesis makes no sense as to why it's limited.

Just give the wizard more thesis, cut bonded item (or make it universalist only, w.e.) if needed.

Polymorph... the druid gets to cast functionally infinite max rank battleform spells, and can cast many kinds of buffs, but not the attack boosting ones. You could go with Trick Magic Item into Religion for Heroism? Similarly, you can use Animist with Darkened Forest Form (which admittedly has a higher action tax but only costs 1 action upfront so you can combo it with spells and has fewer feats required), who naturally get Heroism and Bless anyway. It'll be Wis based but polymorph lets you neglect your Dex and Str so you can pump Int skills if you want.

... hmm, Animist might fit better than I thought? Instead of being spirits, reflavour them as the power of the artifacts. And you benefit from extra Lore too.

Or, as many people have mentioned, the intention is that the activity-action is a wrapper around the subactions, meaning anything referring to the action as a whole (which can be three, two, one, free or re-action) only refers to the activity-action, which logically is the case for things referencing next or previous actions, while anything referring to an individual action can reference the actions within, like anything giving a flat benefit to any action of a specific type.