Ryangwy's page

I have also found that, by RAW, hero points are both lackluster and unintuitive—it's better to reroll things you're good at and failed, even if it feels unimportant, than it is to spend them important-feeling rolls that you're bad at. MAP-0 strikes are a better candidate for a hero point reroll than failing at your worst save. I personally don't like this, since it makes them worse at being a player-side fudge factor.

That's a weird thought - rerolling your MAP-0 attack is often just going to be a piddly amount of damage... unless it's a buffed attack, in which case the player is not going to find it unimportant. Meanwhile, a critically failed worst save is often more likely to upgrade to a fail than the failed MAP-0 attack to a success (unless you're playing a fighter/gunslinger against -2 enemies who have a bizarrely overbuffed DC) and if it's just a fail, well, the player can decide if sickened 1/whatever the fail effect is something worth gambling a hero point on.

I'm not sure what kind of mechanic would be better on a roll you genuinely suck at rather than a roll you're good at but rolled bad, and I'm not sure we'd want one because the point is... you are bad at those rolls.

I've found hero points don't help when your on a bad streak, you'll just roll the same number or worse. Rolling a crit fail from a fail is one of the worst feelings. A friend of mine almost quit after 6 sessions of rolling a 5 about 20% of the time, streaks of 3-4 5s in a row and every other number being a 5, it was rough to see, even our GM was like "I feel bad but I don't know how to make this fun." It happens but there isn't much you can do about terrible luck.
In my last group the GM adopted my idea to allow hero points to give +10 instead of a reroll if desired. It gives players the option to know when they use the point it will have an effect, and that feels great. Just need to be prepared for auto crits, you could add in a limiter on damage for them and I think it would be fine.

My simple rule for that is that if a reroll isn't a success and didn't improve the result (so not if a crit fail upgrades to a fail that does something), you get the hero point back. Eventually, raw number of rolling twice will smooth things out.

Along this line, if I was to let them reroll enemy dice, it'd be crit sucess only.

Problem is: the game changes drastically from low levels to mid levels. my point is that 1-5 pathfinder is a COMPLETELY different game than 7-20 pathfinder mathematically speaking

Thing is, that's a feature, not a bug, of the class+level genre in general - basically, because the design of class + level means people get increasing number of options as they level up, early levels need to be faster (and hence, more lethal) to avoid getting into a rut and latter levels need to be slower so that players and monsters alike can actually dig into their bag of tricks.

PF2e is already a lot more equal than, say, 3.PF or 5e in this regards. It can't do better than 4e, but that's because 4e does a lot of signposting about party and enemy composition and class power choices that gives it a much more reliable baseline as to how players and monsters will interact with each other on a level-by-level basis. If you can't guarantee that both players and monsters alike will have a certain expected set of options, you instead get the situation as described.

I'd say It's less an indication that the book cannot be reprinted G&G style as such (writing an 8-page treaty on new magic is not THAT difficult a prompt for an experienced writer. It's just a matter of making new lore and fitting it in the old lore's space. Additionally, the Earplug appears in two different books as a fringe case).

Paizo can do whatever they want. They can repost material if they wish to within the same license. But I fear I'm growing pedantic.

It's not text, it's formatting, typesetting and art. You aren't just writing 8 pages, it's 8 pages that occupy the exact same number of lines with the exact same font and the exact page width (variable), that make sense with the fancy background they gave those 8 pages, and which can be summarised in a paragraph that (again) occupies the exact correct number of lines in the first page, plus double-check if the new text will cause the index to misalign.

Oh, and then you need to make a new class archetype with the exact same number of feats and features as the Runelord, whose feats in level order occupy the same about of space as existing Runelord feats, and so on. And then do the same to elementalist which has a spell list, isn't that nice?

If at any point the number of pages increase or decrease for any single element, it's no longer doable like GnG, you're basically making a new book from scratch, asset-wise.

I was just saying that the fundamental lore part is not a reason ... for anything. It's not huge and you can put it in basically any book.

Well, they've described what went into GnG remaster and why the Inventor got such minimal changes, and basically in order to do a reprint-remaster, everything needs to be on the same page taking approximately the same number of lines. As such, the fundamental lore is mostly an issue because it's 8 dedicated pages plus one very awkwardly positioned large paragraph and maybe a few more spots I missed, and there's just nothing to fill that space with (esp since the eight pages are fancy with custom fonts and images). Same for runelord/elementalist.

Basically, it's a physical issue, not a conceptual one. The moment you take something out of the book, it's no longer reprintable.

That is a big chunk but the runelord stuff was also totally revamped in the new magic school book. It is not a guns and gears thing where they can just do a few tweakes and changes to put things up to remaster. Major sections of the book are simply no longer valid.

Agreed that 'what are they putting there' is a huge issue with 'reprinting' SoM, same as Gods and Magic. Everything regarding schools, out, and that's not just the school primer alone but also the opening where they point you to the school primer. Both headliner archetypes, out. Just the existing Magus errata alone will likely cause a page jump, so more to do. And what do you do with the school-mentioning items like grimoires?

They could certainly stuff most of the class content of Secrets of Magic, Dark Archive and Book of the Dead into a single 'Complete Mage' style book (at least, the ones not already remastered, I'm expecting Impossible to eat a lot of BotD content) - certainly, SoM and BotD both need it about equally, what with the heavy reliance on schools of magic they had (OK, just the one for BotD, but you know what I mean). Doing so would likely be a not-insignificant endeavour of rejiggling the pages to work, though. The effort would on par with a new book, which means it'd need to sell like a new book to be worth it.

They could also just remaster DA separately, it needs the least change and can be sold like GnG, and instead poach many other archetypes made defunct by the spell school changes to fill the space - Captivator stands out, but many AP specific archetypes could be borrowed like Eldritch Researcher/Spirit Hunter from AV. Then add some new archetypes to replicate the old schools that's missing and maybe there's enough content to sell a new book?

Like it's a bit weird that a flurry ranger will just happily pair a light pick with a sword but a fighter who is ostensibly "the master of all weapons" would never want to do that because of the proficiency issue.

I mean, I've been making the point that the 3.PF1 fighter is intended to be the 'master of one kind of weapon', not the master of all weapons (now, don't ask me what the iconic fighter is doing, but also the iconic ranger has the wrong edge for his weapon so let's just accept that iconics don't make sense).

There is currently a gap for a character as good with a bow as a non-finesse sword and/or polearm, representing in particular the asian noble warrior (especially the samurai), but then again you still have the issue of them using two different attacking stats and getting mediocre benefits out of it.

You'd also never want to pair the light pick (which has most of it's weapon budget in critting with fatal) with a sword (which doesn't) but that's a minor nitpick.

Ryangwy wrote:

Given how Mauler and Archer remaster went...

Would you please elaborate? Were they changed?

Treat martial as simple, advanced as martial, so they only benefit from your proficiency in all weapons, not specific weapon groups.

(In the process I found the feat that lets you Reactive Strike with ranged weapons, Mobile Shot Stance, meaning that earlier question of 'can the fighter do x' is settled with 'yes, definitely')

That would be almost just as fine, except that the intent of their versatile swappable feats makes less sense than they already do. At least it can be used for its intended purpose at 19th-20th level instead of it just being extra feats.

This is where the fact their feats are not tied to weapon groups work out - almost every non-ranged weapon group can switch between one-handed (with or without shield) and two-handed with the two flex feats, for instance. I GM for a fighter who does exactly that, switching between one-handed flail with shield and two-handed reach flail. Admittedly I also give a little extra treasure in customised weapons, but hey.

Personally, I think the Recharge feature should be removed from Spell Strike entirely.

Since Spell Strike already takes two actions to use, you can’t spam it across multiple turns anyway. Removing Recharge would help reduce the heavy action cost of the class.

Have you considered using your conflux spells to, you know, recharge, instead of spamming Imaginary Weapon?

No, seriously, Spellstrike is a stupidly powerful feature that's normally priced as three actions flat (Eldritch Archer, Beast Gunner), removing recharge would require nerfing spellstrike into the ground because, what, people can't restrain themselves from using it every turn? I guess they could slap a dragon breath-like 1 round cooldown instead, and also while they're at it remake every single conflux spell (you know, one of the magus core class features, which the hybrid studies are built around) and every other recharge action compression feat.

Personally? I think they should remove the Recharge feature from Spell Strike all together.

I mean, Spell Strike already requires two actions to use, so it's not like you can spam it in multiple turns. That would remove some of the more glaring action tax from the class in my opinion.

I mean, does any other class require you to spend an Action just to use its key feature more than once?

Recharging for Spell Strike is an 'action tax' in the way Panche for Finishers are - this is a ridiculously powerful ability that normally costs 3 actions (see: Eldritch Archer, Beast Gunner) there's no way they're making it 2 actions flat.

Besides, a lot of Magus feats and all their conflux spells are about action-compressing Recharge, you'll be flat out making a new class from scratch.

Magus could use more common-action + recharge feats, like reload and recharge, but hell no to removing recharge.

There's no game mechanics balance reason to not make the change. But there's a thematic reason to do it.

I'm just going to remind you again that restrictions are thematic, you even admit that it's thematic for, like, every other martial, just that the fact the Fighter doesn't linearly get it's restriction apparently breaks something for you.

Given how Mauler and Archer remaster went, it's far more likely to just bake in the stepped proficiency at level 1 and replacing Versatile Legend at 19 than removing it.

(Presumably, that also solves your and OP's problem, because your problem seems to be that it's inconsistent and you agree classes can have thematic exclusions, right?)

It's not just that no one has yet managed to counter-argue in a direct and clear way that the point I'm "complaining about", even in agreement with the OP, is not a valid point. No one has yet managed to point out in a simple and direct way that the point I'm defending is invalid, wrong, or already adequately met by the system, or would cause a serious problem for balancing or would prevent/hinder existing builds. Instead, almost all the answers I've been given have been things like "no, the fighter is flexible with weapons but you have to specialize or accept the fact that this type of build will be subpar" where I usually counter-argue by saying 'why? If the idea, even inherited from PF1/D&D, besides being implicit in the class feature and in examples, is precisely for the fighter to be flexible, what is the benefit and meaning of this restriction? Why not simply remove it or add feats that allow for a little more flexibility by taking extra weapon groups?' and the discussion for some reason ends up going back and forth due to attempts to show that I am either seeing things from the wrong point of view, or I did not correctly understand some need for limitation, or it simply goes beyond the scope of allowing a wider range of character concepts built on the fighter by removing or reducing an obligation of specialization along with several normal digressions that occur in the middle of the discussion.

I mean, that's because a discussion on expanding the number of scenarios you get peak coverage of is always going to be a bit like this, because it's horizontal power but in a baked-in way that's hard to adjucate, it makes some people's specific fantasies pop off but also dilutes the overall class fantasy and it's also, like, seldom a top priority unless the proficiencies are really weird (like warpriest and alchemist premaster).

Like, there's a horse archer barbarian class archetype in 3.5e, wouldn't it be cool if we could let barbarian rage apply to bows and mounts? Why not? I could recycle almost all the arguments you used for this too. In the end, I think the strength of the fighter as is plus the fact the Archer and Mauler don't give legendary proficiency postmaster is a good enough argument against it, and if you want it as a feat this is a small enough matter you could do it as a homebrew, either as a (6th level?) feat or a class archetype (say, Samurai Bushi, you get faster proficiency in the katana, naginata and daikyu only). It's something with as many pros as cons and the fighter isn't really feeling lost without it.

It's not something I can argue you out of on facts because it's a narrow enough margin but also not something you can convince me of either for the same reason.

No, for two reasons. The first is that one of the great benefits of the fighter since time immemorial is that it can serve any weapon theme that does not depend on anything supernatural or magic. And as I and others have mentioned before, the advantage of the fighter is precisely that it does not have a well-defined archetype or personality, thus allowing it to be adapted to any type of character concept focused on weapons without depending on magic or supernatural powers, with some other more specialized classes alternatively serving other specific concepts better, such as the ranger, who has the concept of being a hunter/fighter of nature.

I'm not sure what 'time immemorial' is - I think I've sufficiently made my case that 'weapon group specialist' is the intended core identity of the 3e fighter, due to how the weapon focus chain is positioned, and this was in fact carried on to 4e (many of their powers ask for specific weapon groups). It didn't quite into 5e, but I don't think PF2e took any cues about class identity from 5e and thank goodness.

'X weapon master' is, frankly, an incredibly broad archetype, while 'walking armory' where every weapon is different is actually really specific - most general media shows characters using a single weapon or weapon group. The fact that the fighter can't service a rare, unusual concept isn't a mark against it, and as you yourself noted there's a lot of ways for a fighter with the right weapon group to approximate it anyway.

That's why I said, the biggest limitation today is thematic and not mechanical. The player who is more concerned with the mechanical issue already has options, but the guy who wants to make, for example, a Walking Armory style character, the fighter today penalizes him for this choice.

But that's... good, right? Because thematics means not every class can fit every character concept, and 'the fighter is good with one group of weapons' is a simple, easy to communicate restriction that matches up to many character concepts, even if it's strictly not true at 1-4. The fact that the sword fighter needs to either use the polytool or something like Dazing Blow to deal bludgeoning at their full proficiency is good! It's thematic!

If you want to be a walking armoury you can go be a precision ranger, who does with hunt prey have the added cool bit that he focuses on his prey then pulls out the best suited weapon for that prey. Using multiple different weapon groups wasn't exactly in the fighter's ballpark in any edition, it's fine, they'll live.

So like, it's not that the PF2e FIghter doesn't ahve an identity, it's just that it doesn't implement mechanically certain fighter feats from PF1e that you really like. That's.. it? That's true of every other class, Barbarians and Rangers got entire core features changed so hard that it's unrecognizable but I'm not exactly seeing people complain you can't take iconic barbarian feat Extra Rage. Snap Shot is, like... so far down the line of 'conceptually core fighter' it's not even funny. Fighters have better weapon focus, the dual wield chain, the multishot chain, all five combat maneuvers, shield feats... is there anything they are missing as a build concept that was in PF1e core (and maybe the APG) instead of a very specific mechanical implementation of an idea?

Dual Handed Assault, as already mentioned multiple times to you, allows you to... increase the damage of a weapon by using it in two hands.

Dazing Blows let you deal bludgeoning with any weapon (there are like... 10 total creatures weak to piercing)

You have Point Blank Stance to remove volley already, live with it. There is no identity-based reason why you need to stack multiple stances

While ranged fighters will have to tragically (lol) live with not having a reaction, Lunging Stance lets you apply Lunge's effect to your Reactive Strike.

Seriously, AoN is free and well organised, do you like... not read the free open archive before insisting things don't exist.

"Oh no! My shield broke! I can't fix it yet! All I have is my longsword. If only I could grab it in two hands and get extra damage."

"Oh no! My bastard sword doesn't do much slashing damage! If only I could stab with it and get piercing damage instead."

"I'm super good with my bow, but it would be nice if I didn't need to enter a stance to remove that annoying volley trait. I would use other stances instead."

"I'm super good with my bow, but it would be nice if I could snipe people with Reactive Strike within half of my weapon's range increment."

You'd think that the Fighter would...

So, yo be clear, the fighter can already do, like, a ton of these via feats, and you even specifically name Point Blank Stance here - you just... want the current feats to be more powerful, despite everyone in this thread trying to explain to you that the fighter is, already, powerful!

Like, right now, you're past complaining about the identity of a fighter and into 'well, sure, these can do the thing I'm thinking of but what if they also give +2 damage, stackable with every other feat I can take'.

Like, at least the discussion on Versatile Legend has an actual meaningful difference with a clearly stated goal, you just keep asking for the fighter to get feats that do a thing, and when you get told they already have that, insist it doesn't count because your ideal feat would stack with the existing feat. Which, come on, you're not asking for identity here, you're asking for the fighter to have vertical power increases in their feat trees beyond what they already get.

I already have trouble making a Fighter that isn't a braindead meathead that always "kicks in the door" OR that isn't "Wuxia".

That seems like a you problem - class feats are largely meant for fighting and that's true for most martials in general, take an archetype or just look at skill feats if you want to make, IDK, a fighter that tells stories.

I want to be specialized in one specific weapon group, but to also be flexible with it.

Everyone can wield a sword, but the Fighter should have 5 extra features they only can do with Sword weapons, similar to what a Gunslinger obtain.

Yes, the fighter has an entire pool of feats that are 'what they can do with the sword that others can't'. They just... don't restrict you specifically to the sword, because why would you need to? Do you really need three different ways to write 'gain +1 circumstance bonus to AC' tagged to different weapons, instead of one good Parry feat?

Besides, you then ask for ways to remove that restriction, so that's just extra hoop-jumping.

Only the Fighter has their combat trick apply to all weapons at lower levels, then have it restricted to a single weapon group at middle levels before having it again apply to all weapon groups at very high levels. It has the weird result of making the Fighter switch from being a master of all weapons to a specialist at one weapon group then back again.

The Warpriest called! Seriously, though, you're overthinking this - level 1-4 is the part where players are most likely to want to make changes to their builds reacting to how the game is ran and where it's the least disruptive, so the extra flexibility there allows for soft-swaps. Once you're past that, getting locked in hurts less (because if you're going to switch you'll likely need to swap a bunch of feats too) and provides a soft but meaningful damper on power, letting the Fighter shift it into other things. The 19th level feature is a ribbon, given when it's unlikely to affect anything and filling up a nice spot.

Not every Fighter feat work with every weapon, and like I keep telling you, the Figther doesn't have a feat or feature that let them treat "ONE signature weapon" as special to bypass certain requirements.

Where is the feat that allows you to treat any weapon as Two-Hand, similar to how the Apocalypse Rider can treat every two-handed weapon as Jousting?

Where is the feat that allows you to use another critical effect from another weapon group?

Where is the feat that allows you to increase one signature weapon's damage by one die?

THAT's versatility.

... We have the signature weapon class and.. it's the inventor. The weapon inventor gets all of that because, within the world of Golarion, a bespoke martial technique (aka a feat that grants you an action) is something that expresses skill and actually making one signature weapon different from it's mundane brethren involves physically messing with the weapon, whether it's the weapon inventor, the champion's blade ally or the exemplar's ikon.

The fighter can achieve all the effects you asked for... as feat-granted actions, because that's what it means to be skilled with weapons (and can apply it to all similar weapons because, again, it's skill, not your weapon being extra special)

Seriously, why are you obsessed with getting a critical effect from another weapon group? This can't eb a PF1e thing (because they don't exist in PF1e).

Having played several homebrew iterations of the 3.PF fighter (the group I'm in jokes that the fighter could have a feat at every level and a way to swap feats as a chunk dynamically and still not match up to a halfcaster, though the current iteration of the homebrew stops short of that), the minor issue is that the fighter's 'identity' in PF1e was just 'more feats' and so with sufficient published feat it... kind of didn't have an identity. The weapon focus/specialisation chain was definitely meant to be the core identity, though, given it's prominence in the core and being effectively uncompletable without fighter levels. But you could runa fighter than didn't do that, and I suppose that creates a sense of 'loss' for players that did that often (likely ones playing with access to all books and probably some homebrew on top). The PF2e Fighter maps best to the PF1e Fighter with core books only and there's several core design reasons why trading Fighter Weapon Mastery for anything is a terrible idea, which is why we're getting commander and Bastion I guess.

Yeah like... Fighters are the weaponmaster class, and this is represented by them having increased proficiency with a specific group of weapons and feats that work with certain weapon styles. It doesn't need to be any weirdly more specific in a way that works against the PF2e feat system, nor doe the existence of the entirely ribbon feature Versatile Legend in any way makes the perfectly sensible weapon progression it had prior an issue.

There are no in play depictions of being a weaponmaster that a Fighter cannot already fulfill, unless you consider the (entirely out of universe) set of prerequisites its feats have or don't have to be core to the weaponmaster fantasy, which I have to say is an extremely specific way of looking at a class fantasy that is a bit to niche to cater to. If you wondered why 3.PF1 did things that way, it was because feats were available to all and hence the prerequisites and ways to ignore them were a way to soft-lock them to fighters with their increased number of feats - the prerequisites were never at any point intended to be a core part of the class fantasy, and indeed 4e delivers the exact same class fantasy without those prerequisites and prerequisite removal, because they moved most of the flavour of being a weaponmaster into powers (which map far better onto PF2e feats, especially for martials).

That's not the point, as I said before, it's the prohibition of the concept itself. More practical players don't care, but a more thematic player is harmed.

Won't a more thematic player be helped because it incentivizes them to stick to their preferred weapons once runes start mattering (they don't at 1-4, conveniently) instead of optimisation brain forcing them to use a weapon that doesn't fit their character?

Besides, this is true of... basically every martial except the ranger and champion (and even then the ranger likely wants specific weapons). Barbarians can't use agile weapons, roguelikes can't use non-finesse or agile weapons, monks have exactly one weapon they can use, gunslingers are special-case fighters, magus put their weapon restrictions in their subclass, thaumaturges can only use one-handed weapons, summoners and exemplars need to designate their preferred weapon during daily prep (as does weapon thaum), inventors (and giant barbarians) can only use One Weapon.

And none of that gets into what happens if you fight giants and they drop a Huge weapon with runes. Happens a lot, especially at higher levels where Medium humanoid weapon-users start to peter out as viable opponents and carriers of runed weapons.

(It's kind of funny that the other anti-fighter person is instead proposing we go all in on fighters having extremely specific feats usable for only a single weapon instead)

The fact Fighters get proficiency back at 19-20 is just a fun ribbon, it's level 19 it won't actually come up.

But understand the following. As already mentioned in another post, the rogue, the barbarian, the thaumaturge and other martial artists have a more specific and better defined personality/archetype than the fighter, who has the idea of ​​being more generic and comprehensive. So simply limiting him in the middle of the game only hinders this flexibility or imposes a parsonage, in my opinion, unnecessarily, because if there were no such limit, the fighter would continue to serve the builds focused on a weapon or a group of weapons in the same way and would suffer the costs of changing weapons in the same way.

I mean, I did point out a potential reason for it - to keep specifically the dual weapon fighter from overlapping with the non-two handed builds, because if the fighter gets max proficiency in everything having your second weapon be shield spikes or a free hand becomes close to optimal.

The legacy reason is because in 3.5e the fighter's main thing of note was extra fighter feats and the main fighter feat chain was gated behind feats that specify specific weapons or weapon groups, so the fighter is actually meant to wield one type of weapon specifically for the exact same reason the rogue has their specific weapon list.

Due to how weapon progression works, the fighter merely shares the quirk of effectively losing weapon proficiencies at 5th level with casters. This really isn't an issue, though, since 5th level is also about where you start wanting to specialise in one weapon rather than have a golf bag of them. This quirk allows for interesting campaign stories where the fighter acquires a legendary weapon somewhere in the 1-4 range and chooses to specialise in it afterwards - due to how feat selection works, it's likely untenable to do it after that point anyway without necessitating a full rebuild, at which point you might as well let the fighter repick their weapon specialisation.

From a mechancal perspective, I think the main thing this stops is for free hand/shield builds to be pushed to also take up dual wielding, because currently if you use an actual weapon in your main and a free hand or shield in your off, the additional -2 to hit makes picking up dual wielding a more dicey proposition. I think this is good, actually, because due to how fighter works it sort of wants free-hand and shield to be separate from dual wielding and if a fighter is max prof with fists, shield spikes and, say, picks, the 'optimal' dual wield fighter is also going to be a shield/free hand fighter and vice versa. We already have a shield monk problem, but that's in service to a more global shield functionality. Let the dual wield fighter be optimal using two similar weapons!

Ravingdork wrote:

Try 520 feet per round for an elf monk with Furious Sprint from Barbarian archetype. Without magic. Last I checked, the equivalent of 173.33 feet per action more than doubles Usain Bolt on his best day.

And the hero can do it ALL DAY LONG WITH GEAR.

Well, if you are counting it as 3 actions per round, then no, actually (unless there are some feats which allow that). Travelling speed is counted at about 1 action per round as far as I remember. And Hustling at about 2 maybe? And it's not perpetual, but could be longer than 10 minutes for such character I suppose.

Usain Bolt isn't travelling or hustling either, I'm not sure why people insist on using the peak performance of a person in a situation where there is nothing to focus on except running and comparing it to the combat speed of game characters expected to hit those values even when they are bleeding, on fire, trying not to get backstabbed by a goblin...

BotBrain wrote:

The idea that fighter is alone in getting functionally nothing from is dedication is not true.

Also the fighter does have "fighting styles" - that's what its feats are for, and it get more than any other comparable class thanks to combat verstality.

Then where are the feats that have "expert / master / legendary proficiency in [this weapon group]" as a prerequisite?

Like, to be clear, is your particular criticism that fighters do not specifically have that particular line, despite it being the most useless line possible in PF2e (because every class except Warpriest gets proficiency bump at very predictable levels, meaning you can absolutely calculate the level for which a Fighter has Master in a weapon group and anyone taking Fighter Archetype will only have Expert)?

You've been ignoring my post naming the feats that do what you asked fighter to do in favour of repeating your desires for having feats worded a specific way that don't measurably differ from the Fighter in practice

Tridus wrote:

The net outcome is the same: changing how the weapon works in some way.

... for the Fighter only.

How come Gunslingers are heavily specialized in Firearms and Crossbows, but Fighters cannot fill blanks with other Weapon groups again?

Most of the gunslinger's support for firearms/crossbows comes from keying it to the reload action which is... the same as all the fighter feats that key to a weapon trait. Like, theoretically, if they finally make the sling gunslinger subclass, almost all of the gunslinger's feats will be compatible with it, same as how I could make any weapon with existing traits and the fighter can work with it.

The Fighter should be able to be "the only one" to wield weapons in creative ways.

It's almost like they get dozens of feats related to using weapons in creative ways, like, IDK, Slam Down, Intimidating Strike, Ricochet Stance...

Like, I have no idea what your contention is. The fighter has several feats that add new crit effects to Strikes, like Intimidating Strike and Felling Strike. It has feats that modify or act on weapon-specific traits, like Point Blank Stance, Agile Grace and Twin Parry. It has feats that effectively add traits to your weapon, like Brutish Shove and Overwhelming Blow. The only thing that the actual PF2e Fighter differs from what you're asking for is that it doesn't physically add the trait to the weapon, that's it. Do you really feel there's such a big difference between the lunge feat as written and 'this weapon gains reach for this Strike or skill action'?

Devils are at least consistent, which fits their lawfulness. All Devils are weak to the same thing, so a mixed group of devils you're prepared for can end up quite easy to handle.

Daemons are quite irksome, especially since they have the inflated HP pool that comes with a 'common' weakness but holy is surprisingly restrictive to apply. The death immunity only ever comes up with Scare to Death in my experience, but it does make swarms of lower level ones even more of a hp pool than normal.

Still better than aberrations, I suppose. If I never have to run another gogiteth in an AP it would still be one too many of their damn no-weakness selves.

Frankly, the idea that AC alone can ever make a character too good is absurd, even in a game as tightly balanced as PF2. I merely pointed out that you could solve the issue by capping how much AC you can have before a shield stops being useful and that it's realistic for it to work that way.

Raising a shield as a discrete action each round is about as tactical as rolling a skill check to unsheath your sword or measuring each round by the number of steps your character can take and giving each action a step count cost rather than an action cost. At a certain point, everything taking an action goes from being tactical to being a pure tax.

There's nothing wrong with a shield just working all the time and a separate defensive action existing to fill the roll that raising a shield does now.

Taking an action isn't a tax because in the three-action system your third action (which might not actually be your third) is considered significantly less valuable than the first two. Basically, if a round is 6 seconds, your 'first' action is 3 seconds, your 'second' is 2 seconds and your 'third' is 1 second - raising a shield is that last one, a tiny tax on your regular combat routine that's trading off against 'step back 5ft', 'making a quick, inaccurate stab' and 'telling your enemy you're going to do things to his mom'. It's already an improvement from D&D, where characters can never be shields down which is equally unrealistic.

Also, the attempt to compare speed against the best record of a professional athlete again forgets it's based on consistent movement in combat and not peak theoretical movement on a dedicated running field. The monk isn't doing the 200m race, they're crossing 200m while being on guard against enemy attacks, across rough terrain that doesn't cross the line to becoming difficult, while maintaining the ability to stop, start and turn on a dime. A 200m race would be a skill challenge modified by base speed.

Any character that needs a feat to do something a first month HEMA guy or novice martial artst will already being doing naturally - for example raising and blocking with a shield, firing a longbow directly, or entering a stance as part of making a strike - is playing like a chump regardless of their actual impact on the battlefield. The idea that any of these things should cost feats or actions is patently silly.

Anyone can do those things without a feat, sure. Doing them with an actual impact? That's a feat, yes, but this is PF2e you get a class feat every other level, you'll live.

Besides, every fighter can raise and block with a shield for free, fire a longbow directly at someone else within 10ft who is both dodging and trying to stab you (just, you know, badly, at -2) and most 'obvious' stances are 1st and 2nd level feats, so...

I mean, the Summoner literally has a class feature to put a glowing mark on both the Summoner and the Eidolon.

The class itself wants it to be obvious.

If anything it's more obvious than Witch, because a familiar can look an awful lot like an ordinary creature or a less dangerous familiar, such as a Wizard's familiar. Those are historically common in Golarian and arcane magic is relatively well known.

It'd be pretty hard for common folk to tell what kind of familiar this is at a glance. Someone with training at identifying magic users probably can, but a more ordinary person is going to see a cat and might realize its a familiar, but that's about it.

Literally anyone can see a big glowing symbol on two entities and figure out that they're connected somehow from that.

I think that covers cases when the Eidolon is doing bad things and the summoner is pretending to be innocent, not, in the midst of battle, figuring out both that A: taking out the summoner takes out the Eidolon and B: that this should be the priority, no matter the action cost, over taking out the Eidolon directly, or taking out any of the other 3, equally dangerous people beating you up.

Ryangwy wrote:

Also, they can already get rid of volley, it's called Point Blank Stance. Do you actually read the Fighter before you make such weird complaints?

and then there's this part:

Quote:

When using a ranged weapon that doesn’t have the volley trait, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to damage rolls on attacks against targets within the weapon’s first range increment.

If it was coupled with a feat that removed the Volley trait from any Bow weapon, you could benefit from the extra +2 with a composite longbow, because you would treat it without the problematic trait.

... The point of that feat is to remove volley and also incidentally give ranged weapons without volley a lesser bonus (which is actually greater before Striking runes, but eh). If there was flat out a feat that removes volley PBS won't exist.

Likewise, Dual-handed assault effectively grants a weapon without two-hand the two-hand trait, plus a bonus for weapon already with that trait. If a feat exists that directly give the tow-hand trait, dual-handed assault, again, wouldn't exist.

At first I thought you just somehow missed all the feats that effectively give a weapon a trait, but actually you know they exist, you just also want a feat that gives the weapon a trait so that, what, you can stack the two together? At this rate you might as well ask for a feat that flat out gives +2 circumstance bonus to your favoured weapon group, because that's what you're asking for in essence.

Except that a Fighter who picked the Sword group cannot apply the Versatile trait on all associated weapons... or getting rid of the Volley trait on all Bow weapons... or adding the Jousting trait to all Spear weapons.

... You're describing the Inventor now, you realise? Why would the a weapon master add more traits to weapons, instead of having feats that key off the existing traits on weapons like, IDK, the Fighter?

Also, they can already get rid of volley, it's called Point Blank Stance. Do you actually read the Fighter before you make such weird complaints?

Squiggit wrote:

That's not an answer, and the fighter being more generic than its specific alternatives is the point, not a problem.

It's not generic if it's supposed to be a weapon master.

Sure, it can often way more often than other martials, but... since when "quantity is better than quality"? It should go like this:

A cleric uses Sword A to get Effect B.
A rogue uses Sword A to get Effect C.
A wizard uses Sword A to get Effect D.

A fighter uses Sword A to get Effects B, C and/or D, because he's the weapon master, not the cleric, rogue or wizard.

A "weapon master" should select different critical effects, apply various traits and so on... and right now, it's not.

But... a cleric and wizard (assuming training) uses a sword to get effect A (the base traits of the weapon), badly.

How is the fighter not the weapon master? He explicitly gets all the effects of the weapon 10% more than other martials and far more than those chump casters.

Unfortunately, daemons end up getting the short stick - other than a universal weakness to holy, they end up having a real grab bag of abilities. Devils at least all have the same immunities and weaknesses to unify them. If you told me daemons were actually generic fiends, instead of a single family, I would believe you.

Anyway...

On a pure caster GMs have trained me to do everything I can to max out AC. So I will often get it as high as I can.

But on a summoner which is a hybrid exposed on both fronts I do see the appeal of having good HPs, which is why I posed the question that got us down this whole tangent.

I don't think any summoner build could survive the kinds of GMs I face that go to comical extremes trying to 'geek the mage' (an old Shadowrun term for this kind of focus lock, and I suspect where the mentality originated from as far back as the late 80s in tRPGs).

But even in a game with what most of you seem used to - GMs that judge it by situation - I worry summoner is too 'MAD' - needing good Cha, Dex, Con, likely Wis, and for me personally also +1 so I can unlock the 'train a skill' skill feat.

I don't see a good way to build or play the class unless a GM coddles me.

Remember that, unlike almost every other caster, the Summoner has a different option - run away and use Boost Eidolon (100ft). That makes it more survivable in your weirdass situation than every other cloth caster by default. Of course, if you also play on tiny battle maps with no terrain such that nobody can retreat more than 60ft and you can't body-block exits, then sure, give up on playing any caster that isn't a druid, bard or warpriest, but that's a very weird situation.

Every class needs Dex, Con, Wis, and all martials except the Thief Rogue needs Str on top of that, so it's exactly as MAD as every non-Wis character in the game. Which is why you get four stat boosts per 5 levels! Because of the relative contribution of the caster side, you're also able to get away with dropping Cha to +3 on gen if you need.

[

No amount of HPs makes up for being crit. In play I've seen Barbarian as having the worst survivability of any class I've seen people try for this very reason. Especially pre-remaster.

Also, Summoner doesn't even have light armor proficiency.

I suppose if you want to be the party tank with your eidolon - which then entails keeping your caster out of range of enemies rather than near that eidolon. I keep seeing players try to be the party tank with things like the plant eidolon - and in fact that's what a player is doing in the game I'm in. But I'm starting to feel it's not that viable a position to go for because he's got no AC and is too easy to crit because... he keeps his caster too close. Enemies just melee hit his caster instead of the eidolon.

And a few extra HP is not going to help when you become a crit sponge.

But your Eidolon already has max AC - you're reducing crit chance on someone who shouldn't be targeted at all, in exchange for HP on the actually punched target ideally.

If your cloth caster with 30ft range is getting punched, run away and use Boost Eidolon, you're still hitting standard martial numbers. If your GM is still chasing your cloth caster, grapple and trip exists. If none of that work, take Sentinel dedication, IDK.

Ryangwy wrote:

Also, you're really not a caster - with your teeny spell slots, focus spells dedicated to buffing your Eidolon and whatnot, you have more leeway than other casters to just 'self' buff. Runic body on you eidolon is exactly as good as it is on any other martial (better, if that martial is a Champion).

Well...you're a caster. But your cantrip casting + eidolon attack provides combined DPR on par with a lot of other PCs. To go back to the thread's title, no the class does not have any big advantage over other classes. The fact that you control a 'martial body' and a '[wave] caster body' does NOT mean you are not going to regularly do two PC's worth of damage. If people new to the game make that assumption, they will be disappointed. A max rank spell with a solid hit can be a good burst round, sure, but probably the nicest thing about the class is that it gives the player the ability to switch around tactics quite easily. Melee, ranged, cast, strike, the class moves pretty seamlessly between these things. But nope on "Eidolon + act together gives me two PC's worth of power!" Paizo designed it to be more like 1 PC of power when casting and striking are used in combination.

One cantrip + 1-2 Strikes off a martial chassis is about two poorly played PCs worth of power :) More seriously, if people are going to be disappointed they aren't worth 1.5x the other PCs, there's nothing that's going to make them stick around anyway, and if they're always comparing themselves to the pick fighter or giant barbarian then they should just... play those classes?

But for new players who aren't comparing DPS and want the exotic fantasy of being two people, the Summoner has a far simpler set of heuristics to be decent than other classes that serve more complicated flavours.

A summoner can get quite far with just knowing that it's optimal to cast a save spell and having their eidolon strike in one turn (and telling them to figure out how to enable it) quite fast, and the worst case scenario of just jamming Boost Eidolon into your three action Eidolon still puts it roughly on par with other martials. Yes, you have to avoid the... two? casting eidolons, but that's the same as, say, outwit ranger. Your damage booster doesn't require any specific build beyond the obvious to use, unlike, say, inventors.

Also, you're really not a caster - with your teeny spell slots, focus spells dedicated to buffing your Eidolon and whatnot, you have more leeway than other casters to just 'self' buff. Runic body on you eidolon is exactly as good as it is on any other martial (better, if that martial is a Champion).

I appreciate the post and echo the sentiment (and even addressed it on my first post in this thread) but I'm honestly not overly concerned about it personally though I'm not discounting it either as a very valid general warning. I obviously don't know anything about the players you've encountered but, as for me, I'm a GM experienced in multiple crunchy systems over the decades (including D&D 3.x and PF1) and running simultaneously multiple NPCs in both roleplaying and combat encounters as well as playing characters for years in multiple systems with lesser pets like animal companions.

If I'm being completely honest, playing the summoner/eidolon concept is the primary reason I'm interested in trying out PF2e at all as its something I've been unable to do in other systems I've tried for the most part. Admittedly, my tastes have run over the past couple years to more rules light systems but I haven't forgotten my crunchy roots either. If I end up souring on the experience, it'll most likely be because the core PF2e style mechanics don't suit my current tastes and not because of the summoner specifically.

Regardless, your post and point are very valid and I'm not surprised about your experience with it as I do agree that as a caster with an integral pet that the learning curve on the summoner is definitely steeper compared with most other classes.

FWIW, I have a relatively new player play a summoner and it's not too bad - just make sure to pick up a save cantrip (or two, if your tradition has ones that target different saves) and remember that casting runic body on your eidolon is likely going to be the most impactful thing you can do until 4th level with your spell slots and you should feel nice and contributive for the first few levels.

Sorry, the point is that you're right about RL "atheist states" but that's why they are *not* a match with Rahadoum at all. Rahadoum seems downright idyllic, if you are a normal citizen. It's an incredibly stable country where citizens are free to travel, and they have a govt structure that represents its people quite well. The harms of the avg Rahadoum citizen are all written to be genuinely external and not the govts fault, such as plague, foreign aggression, etc.

The "atheist states" IRL were the opposite of that, with ice-pick assassinations, mismanaged famines galore, etc.

It's not an exaggeration to claim there has never really been an atheist state IRL. USA tried to split the difference w/ "the wall btwn church and state," but that's not the same thing. And how to consider asian countries with less history top-down easy to label religions, and more individual shinto, etc histories is yet another can of worms.

I'm sorry, you're saying that Rahadoum is treated as more idyllic than any modern day example of a state that outlaws all expressions of religion, and you're also saying that Rahadoum is being treated badly in Pathfinder worldbuilding?

State atheism exists and largely is used by authoritarian regimes to terrorise minorities and remove existing cultural practices that were inconvenient for them. So yes, the only nation in Golarion with enforced atheism is an authoritarian asshat because that is in fact how it happens IRL. The fact they get to good at science instead of the RL effect of that very refusal to acknowledge dissenting views making those state atheist countries hilariously bad at science is already a very kind gesture on Paizo's part! Any country willing to proclaim that all gods are evil in direct contradiction to objective reality should not be capable of the critical thinking to develop scientifically that well!

I don't think there's any reason to believe that Rahadoum is a more biased nation than Cheliax or Thuvia or Osirion or Molthune or Taldor. They just have different biases. Everybody generally operates from the assumption that their experience is normal. Nothing about Rahadoum's anti-divine bias gets in the way of anybody doing research, unless that specific research is related to divine things.

Like Rahadoum is entirely capable of discovering antibiotics, the integrated circuit, plastics, or general relativity.

Sure, but (and I know a lot of people don't use the words to the same rigor I do) the things you mention are technology, not science. Science is a method, technology is a result, Rahadoum takes 1/4 of the generally accepted paradigm of how magic works and tosses it behind the shed which is scientifically far more harmful than most other nation's biases and that does result them having progressed more in a technological way on account of, well, shooting themselves in the foot magic-wise and forcing them do so.

Not that I'm trying contradict, however I am curious where the bits about rejecting science come from for Rahadoum.

I was under the impression, that because they reject the divine they were more advanced in science/medicine.

But maybe it's that they reject anything that paint divine associated things in a positive light.

I used the term 'scientific method' specifically, because a lot of people seem to mix up science with technology - Rahadoum heavily emphasises technology, the use of consistent, well documented methods to achieve reliable results not hinged on singular people. However, they reject the scientific method because that's about removing bias from your observation and this is a very biased nation! The moment anything remotely divine occurs they immediately label it as something to remove and that's not scientific at all.

I mean - as far as I can tell, Rahadoum is supposed to be on the darker shade of grey. They're a nation who responded to trauma via oppression of faith, and who categorically reject scientific fact and indoctrinate their people in something that's objectively false.

The fact that it might not be official state policy and it just coincidentally happens that if you teach all your kids that religions and gods are responsible for everything wrong in the country then bad things happen to religious people doesn't change that much.

Bluemagetim wrote:

If there were feats that allowed picking up features of a second school how would they be structured?

Would one feat be sufficient cost to allow school slots to be used for the adopted schools spells?
Would it require a second feat to gain the adopted schools focus spell?
Would these feats leave universalist hanging out to dry or would universalist get something of their own?

I think I'd do it the other way around -- the first feat would pick the additional school and pick up the focus spell. The second feat would let you prepare that school's spells in your school slots, and I would probably limit it to spell slots lower than your highest rank spell.

And yeah, none of this would help Universalist -- there would need to be another feat or two limited to Universalists that would help them out.

Don't both the bard and druid versions give you the focus spell second? It's also, on paper, more of a power boost, whereas in theory additional school spells are something that your GM can flat out give you (in practice, it's the missing flexibility for the 4th slot a lot of people are craving, but Paizo doesn't seem to value that a lot given how slapdash school spells are)

The words versatile and flexible are starting to become trigger words for me, every time i hear versatile, flexible, viable, ok etc... in a class discussion I 'm starting to assume its horrible.

It's not out-of-combat vesatility or flexibility, which can vary greatly, that's being talked about here, though. The Summoner has an effective 4 actions, like the monk, and it's martial half (the eidolon) hits about as hard as martials with no damage boosters (again, like the monk). Unless you think the monk is a bad class, the summoner is in the same ballpark, except it has built in ways to use the other 2 actions - the summoner can cast damaging save spells, use 1-action skills their eidolon doesn't have the stats to use effectively, or simply use Boost Eidolon and become a regular damage boost martial at the cost of their floating free action.

It's not a 1-to-1 comparison, because the Summoner pays for this by having all defensive abilities be half as effective on them, since you can always hit the other one, but we're not talking about shuffling around prepared spells here, this is a class with 4 actions per turn in combat and baked in ways to use them well.

The most classic interpretation of a ninja that's similar to an stealth assassin can already be replicated by the system in a multitude of ways. If you want to go full Naruto I guess the kineticist works good enough. The only real thing I guess the system doesn't replicate is a monk / rogue hybrid which is I believe what most people want for a ninja. There's enough room for a Wis-based rogue racket in the future that's all about focus spells I guess.

I think it should be noted that the Naruto ninja is a lot closer to the folklore ninja (which is a relatively recent piece of folklore, but so are many youkai and people accept the gashudokoro as authentic Japanese) than the non-supernatural Western depiction of ninjas. They're unironically superheroes (see: Tales of Jiraya, anything about the Sanada Ten Braves). And the existing PF2e classes are not very good at depicting superheroes who mix physical attacks with offensive supernatural techniques - monks have really bad DC progression, inventors have a terrible martial damage booster, now there's the runesmith which has teething issues.